Between Wind & Tide
by Ruby Isabella
Summary: Norrington returns to Port Royal after long absence. (SLASH - NW) Sequel to A Windward Tide. COMPLETE.
1. Chapter One

Title: Between Wind and Tide, Chapter 1  
  
by Ruby Isabella  
  
Disclaimer: The following is fanfiction based on a property owned by Disney.  
  
Summary: Norrington returns to Port Royal after long absence  
  
Notes: Sequel to "A Windward Tide." Also, you might worry at times that this is not slash, but it is. Really. Cross my heart. Finally, it takes place some years after PotC.  
  
1.  
  
"Amazing you survived," the physician mused as he bent to examine the worst of Norrington's scars. "Truly amazing."  
  
Norrington, having no retort, simply wished the examination along. His eyes, lethargic from too few hours of sleep, turned down to stare at the back of the physician's gray wig. Norrington hadn't seen a less interesting thing in a long while.  
  
"What happened here?" Dr. O'Brien's warm, chapped palm cupped the stump that capped off Norrington's thigh. The worst of his scars.  
  
"Gangrene."  
  
"Ah. Who took it off?"  
  
"Cannibals."  
  
"Not to eat, I hope?" O'Brien quipped with a wink.  
  
Norrington suffered the doctor's humor with a frown.  
  
Bending once again to peer at the wound, O'Brien said, "They did a good job. You were lucky."  
  
_Luck._ "Where's Dr. March?" He tugged his shirt across the table to cover the stump. Dr. March could scarcely have been called spry the last time Norrington had set foot in Port Royal, but still. It had only been five years.  
  
"I'm afraid Dr. March succumbed to the cholera."  
  
"Cholera." The word fell lusterless from his lips. During his...adventure...he'd many times imagined Port Royal. Dreamed of it. Once or twice, in delirium, he'd actually believed he was back in it. But that, unlike this one, was a Port Royal unchanged.  
  
He pictured Dr. March clearly, at his last visit to the man, two days before he and the crews of two of the British Royal Navy's best ships in the Caribbean set out on orders to--  
  
It didn't matter. He smoothed the shirt over his good leg. The games grown men played with land and titles and the lives of other men left a bitter taste in his mouth. Even bitterer was the memory that he had once been a cog in the machine.  
  
"Who else?" he asked.  
  
"Oh, too many. Far too many. Terrible, terrible tragedy it was. But think-- it might have been you along with them had you not been.... Well, at least you're alive."  
  
Norrington cleared his throat. "Governor Swann?"  
  
He knew already Swann no longer held the post of governor--Governor Evans had sent him several missives already--but his assumption had been that Swann had returned to England; death hadn't entered his mind, perhaps because he had seen so much of it, or because he himself had survived so much. Surely those living in civilized surroundings.... A protective layer of fantasy peeled itself away from his world.  
  
"I'm afraid he was no match for the cholera, either." O'Brien turned to his cabinet of powders and concoctions.  
  
"And his daughter?"  
  
"Mrs. Turner? She--"  
  
A banging at the front door followed by clomping footfalls and the squeak of something--boot heels?--being dragged across polished wooden planks, drew the attention of both men to the examination room's door.  
  
"Better go see who that is." The physician reached for the door's handle. With a look back, he said, "You can get dressed. Save for the leg there, you're healthy as can be. Might want to get a few good meals in you, though. If you have any questions, leave them with Mrs. Southby on your way out. Mrs. Southby, what's going on?" he called as he opened the door.  
  
The door closed. Norrington lifted his crutch from where it lay against the examination table. His clothes, save for his shirt, lay spilled over the top of a chest of drawers along the side wall. The gulf of the room lay between him and them. After shrugging into the shirt and fastening its front, he braced the crutch under his armpit so that he could lean forward to pivot himself off the table.  
  
Dressing, especially in the stuffy English clothing he'd lost practice at, took a painfully long time.  
  
The knot in the bottom of his trouser leg banged against his other ankle as he turned to leave.  
  
~ ~ ~  
  
He ducked his head as he pushed out the physician's front door. Some responses were deep-grained, like the warding off of London's rain and chill when entering the streets. London...a place he hadn't been in longer than he could remember, but the weather in Port Royal--unaccountably frigid and damp for both of the two days he'd been back--raised long-dead memories of life on the other side of the Atlantic. It didn't, however, raise any desire to go back.  
  
The sound of a carriage hurrying as best it could down the muddy main road brought his head up just as he was about to grab hold of the porch's railing. At scarcely half-past four, lamps burned in the windows of the shops and offices that lined the street--the gray sky had grown that overbearing. As the carriage that had caught his attention rolled past, it revealed another parked across the street. Norrington pulled his coat closer against his neck. His nose was already raw from the damp wind. He mused that the weather had been more temperate in the jungles of Brazil.  
  
High and black, this second carriage more than anything reminded him of London. A London cab, or a stray carriage from a London funeral procession. What had happened to Bermuda in his absence, or was it only a trick of the weather and his mental state?  
  
Two black horses waited, lifting and lowering their feet in place, at the front of the carriage. The carriage driver waited in stillness, reins at the ready. A movement just beyond the horses caught Norrington's eye--a swirl of black fabric, the curve of a pale cheek exposed for an instant beneath a dark veil. An eye, its gaze sweeping the street but not climbing the steps of the physician's office nor taking in the one-legged man poised at the top of those steps. And then the figure ducked, lifted its skirts, made ready to climb into the carriage.  
  
"Elizabeth?"  
  
The iron railing bit his hand with cold.  
  
"Elizabeth!" The wind stole his voice.  
  
He took his eyes from the carriage long enough to ensure that his crutch landed solidly on the stair below. While he hopped down after it, he lifted his head again.  
  
"Miss Swann!"  
  
The tip of his crutch nearly slipped from under him as he skidded down the next two steps. He came, finally, to an unsteady halt on the side of the street, his fingers rigid from his grip on the railing. The carriage door closed.  
  
"Elizabeth!"  
  
He started into the street, but already the carriage was pulling away.  
  
"Miss Swann!" Leaning on his crutch in the middle of Port Royal's main thoroughfare, he stared at the carriage's curtained rear window, willing the curtains to part.  
  
Damn the wet cold; it sunk deep into his bones. He wiped his nose on his sleeve.  
  
"Mrs. Turner," he corrected himself as his faux pas dawned on him. "Mrs. Turner, damn it."  
  
The clip-clop of hooves faded.  
  
How could he be expected to remember? He'd left days before the wedding.  
  
~tbc~ 


	2. Chapter Two

Title: Between Wind and Tide, Chapter 2  
  
by Ruby Isabella  
  
Disclaimer: The following is fanfiction based on a property owned by Disney.  
  
Summary: Norrington returns to Port Royal after long absence  
  
Notes: Sequel to "A Windward Tide." Also, you might worry at times that this is not slash, but it is. Really. Cross my heart. Finally, it takes place some years after PotC.  
  
2.  
  
"Give me the tallest glass of the hardest stuff you've got," he said to the barkeep. He leaned his crutch against the bar and then leaned himself against the bar as well, using his elbow as a brace.  
  
"Comin' right up, Commodore."  
  
"Mister."  
  
"Right."  
  
They'd gone through this exchange already, an hour after he'd had come ashore care of a privateer who'd been disappointed to learn that there was no reward for the return of a lost Commodore to the Royal Navy, especially one that didn't want to return to the Royal Navy.  
  
"It's an honor, sir, and a miracle," the barkeep said--not for the first time--as he set the cup in front of Norrington. "Who ever would have thought to see you again?"  
  
Norrington drank. He remembered the man not at all, but then he hadn't made a habit of visiting the local drinking establishments in his old life.  
  
His good leg ached from holding him up, which was an irritation. Now that he was back in civilization--safe and with no concerns other than what he might do with his life--his body indulged in complaints all but constantly. The crutch chafed. The air was cold. Sleep was impossible.  
  
_Suck it up_, he told himself, told his good leg. _Suck it up._ He'd allowed himself no complaints while clinging to that broken bit of boat, literally dying for water in an ocean full of the stuff, nor did he allow them while he alone had buried what remains of his men washed up on shore, using as a shovel that same plank of wood that had kept him afloat until he himself reached shore, nor when the Indians....  
  
No. No complaints. Ever. Just practical thinking, that's what got him through, that's how he made it back to Port Royal: practical, rational thinking, and perhaps a few run-ins with insanity.  
  
Almost the minute he'd stepped from the privateer's boat, however, his body had become bent with weariness. After three and a half years of nothing but surviving, he suddenly rather doubted his ability to survive the climb up the back stairs to his room above the tavern.  
  
Using the side of his hand, he bumped his drink down the bar toward a stool, which he gratefully dropped his aching bones onto as soon as he had himself situated in front of it.  
  
To celebrate, he drained his glass.  
  
"So, how do ya find it?" the barkeep asked. He stood directly across the bar from Norrington, jamming a towel of dubious cleanliness deep into a stein.  
  
"Find what?"  
  
"Port Royal. Innit good to be home?"  
  
Norrington glanced toward the door. Between him and it sat a few scattered patrons, their heads bent over their cups.  
  
"I'm tired," he answered, turning his focus to the bar. He nudged his empty glass toward the barkeep.  
  
"'Magine so. Been an exhausting few years, has it not? Tell me...." The barkeep crossed his forearms on the bar, accidentally nudging the empty glass back toward Norrington as he leaned in. "Is it true?"  
  
"Is what true?"  
  
"That that bloke Johnson, that he got eaten alive by a school of piranha while you two were wandering--"  
  
Norrington frowned. He lifted his glass, turned it over, and set it soundly back onto the heavy slab of wood under the barkeep's thick elbows. "No, it's not."  
  
"What happened to him, then?"  
  
"Same as everyone else. He died on the rocks. Never made it to shore."  
  
"You did."  
  
Norrington's mouth tightened. He shoved the inverted glass across the bar. "That I did. And now I need to make it to my bed." He would have liked another drink--another entire bottle of drink, if not a cask. He grabbed for his crutch, nearly sent it falling over, caught it with two fingertips, then shoved it under his armpit. "Good night, sir."  
  
"'Night, Commodore!"  
  
~ ~ ~  
  
Stuck in the jamb of his door was a crisp envelope with "Commodore James Norrington" penned across its front. Unimpressed by the scarlet wax seal on the back, Norrington prized open the flap. Inside he found an invitation to meet with Governor Evans in the morning.  
  
Invitation, order: what it said depended on the tone in which one read it. He slipped the pages between his teeth so that he could open the door to his room. When he removed the envelope from his mouth, the taste of civilization remained on his lips.  
  
He had been avoiding the governor since his return. Before long, Evans would tire of wasting his stationary and send a man or two round instead.  
  
You couldn't ball those up and toss them out the window, let them float down the gutter the way you could a few slips of stiff paper.  
  
~ ~ ~  
  
He became aware first of the wind in the treetops, lifting and scraping heavy jungle leaves against each other. He turned his head on the hard ground and opened his eyes. The rough and crooked trunks of the trees swayed in front of his face.  
  
As it became clear what had happened, disappointment grabbed a hold of his chest and pounced on it, crushing it. Air struggled through his throat in gasps.  
  
A dream. It had all been a dream.  
  
He reached at his side for the forked stick he'd fashioned into a crutch. Patted the ground in the dark. _Bloody hell._ Where was it?  
  
He lifted onto an elbow, blinked into the darkness. For the first time he realized he was shivering. Damn it. A fever was all he needed. He shifted, then stiffened. Something had his foot--probably a vine. Maybe a snake.  
  
Maybe something that would cause him to lose the only leg he had left.  
  
A thin sound loosened itself at the back of his throat at the thought. He rolled sideways, feeling for his crutch and trying, at the same time, to shake his foot free.  
  
_Thunk_.  
  
He startled awake on the floor of his room at the inn with his sheet and thin blanket twisted around his foot. He sat up, hugging himself. The shivering, he realized, was from cold. With half-numb fingers, he tugged the blanket free so that he could wrap his arms in it. His crutch--a real one, not the stick with banana leaves wrapped around the base of its fork for padding--leaned against the wall, between the night table and the bed.  
  
And the wind, the leaves--they were just the rain beating the side of the inn.  
  
He dropped his cheek onto his bent knee, closed his eyes, smelled the jungle, woke himself with a gasp. With a grunt, he lifted himself back onto the narrow bed, then slumped against the wall, his knee bent over the edge of the bed. After a few minutes, the chill air convinced him to pull it under the blanket with the rest of him.  
  
To fend off sleep, he thought about the black carriage he'd seen across the street from the doctor's office. Elizabeth. It had surely been. And Will-- where was Will?  
  
~tbc~ 


	3. Chapter Three

Title: Between Wind and Tide, Chapter 3  
  
by Ruby Isabella  
  
Disclaimer: The following is fanfiction based on a property owned by Disney.  
  
Summary: Norrington returns to Port Royal after long absence  
  
Notes: Sequel to "A Windward Tide." Also, you might worry at times that this is not slash, but it is. Really. Cross my heart. Finally, it takes place some years after PotC.  
  
3.  
  
He woke with the sun, weak as both of them were of late. A crick in his back from a brief, thin slumber kept him bent like an old man as he retrieved his crutch.  
  
He splashed his face with chilly water from the porcelain bowl on the stand. Dressed, slowly. His spine began to straighten, finally, as his muscles warmed and stretched.  
  
A wig sat as-yet-unworn on the wooden chair by the window. He gave it careful consideration for the first time since it had been presented to him, which had been just a few hours after word had gotten round about his return. Clothing had appeared at that time, too, and the offer of a room. In exchange, people seemed to want stories of the hell he'd lived through, as though he'd lived it just to come back and entertain them with tales about it.  
  
The wig's color was as flat and gray as the sky. He lifted it with the cap draped over his fingers as though they formed a shattered skull. He'd been wearing a wig much like it when he'd left Port Royal--had imagined himself quite proper in it, in fact. Dashing, even, with his uniform. His command. He'd worn the wig without any thought to it because that was what was done.  
  
He'd worn it until it floated away in the sea, and he hadn't much use for one since.  
  
With a thump of his crutch, he turned his back to the window. Far below, the gray wig floated away in the sewage gutter.  
  
When he left the inn he turned right, away from the Governor's office, with more pressing matters on his mind than tea and pleasantries with politicos.  
  
His presence in Port Royal being hardly a secret, he could not work out why neither Mr. nor Mrs. Turner had come round to welcome him back. Or sent a note, even. He knew full well why he himself hadn't paid a visit to the Turner house, but Elizabeth and Will hardly seemed the type to let trepidation or momentary awkwardness keep them away.  
  
He made a long hop to avoid tromping on the wig, which had been carried unexpectedly far by the waters that roared through the gutters in the wake of last night's storm.  
  
Had Will told her? He stopped and squinted up the street. At the far end, he could just see a flash of white--their fence, at the edge of their small yard. Their house had been a wedding present from Governor Swann; Weatherby had been eager to tell show it off to him in the month before he'd shipped out.  
  
Will could have told her. That would explain the silence; she stayed away out of disgust, and Will stayed away out of respect for her, which left him- -Norrington--on his own.  
  
After years of dreaming of his return to Port Royal--to friends, to the comfort of a bed and the satisfaction of a meal--the reality fell a bit short.  
  
~ ~ ~  
  
"Is Mrs. Turner in?" he asked of the woman who opened the door. She looked familiar... Yes! She'd worked for the Swanns before he'd gone to sea. He remembered her now, but not her name, which he thought unfortunate. He would have liked to have used it. He'd have liked any little thing that might have made him feel less out of place.  
  
As though she'd heard a noise or a voice, the maid looked behind her. In the space over her shoulder, on the far side of the foyer, just coming through a doorway, a familiar, albeit pale, face appeared.  
  
Norrington opened his mouth, but had no idea what to call out.  
  
"Who is it, Estrella?" Elizabeth asked, her voice sounding unchanged despite the years that had inserted themselves between the last time he'd heard it and now.  
  
Estrella returned her attention to him. "Sir?"  
  
"Uh--"  
  
Elizabeth moved toward them with a polite but curious smile on her face and a vase of flowers clasped between her hands. Her black skirts swished like a straw broom. Estrella stepped aside. One of Elizabeth's eyebrows started to rise as the seconds stretched on without any response from him. Her feet continued to carry her toward him and the maid, and Norrington realized that he had the advantage; he'd known whom he was coming to visit while she'd had no idea who was coming to visit her.  
  
"Oh!" The vase smashed open against the floor. Water and flower petals streamed toward Estrella's feet--Estrella who was already bending to clean up the mess.  
  
"Norrington! Oh my God, Commodore Norrington, is that you?"  
  
"Yes. James, though." He slipped his hat from his head. "Please."  
  
Her arms opened wide, as though taking him in. "James Norrington! Where have you been? When on earth did you get back?"  
  
"Well...."  
  
"Wait! I've completely lost my manners. You must come in out of that terrible weather." She guided him over the broken pottery and flowers with a warm hand on his arm, heedless, it seemed, of the crutch stuffed under his other arm, or of his missing anatomy. Or of the thump of the crutch's foot across her floor.  
  
"I must admit I hadn't expected to be received quite so warmly," he said, allowing himself to be led forward while attempting to glance back at the maid and the open the door.  
  
"What? How dare you think you'd be received any other way? You were a dear friend of my father's."  
  
"I heard about your father."  
  
She led him to an armchair in the parlor.  
  
"I'm sorry," he added.  
  
"Thank you." She perched at the front of a nearby chair, smoothed her skirts over her knees. "Well. Where have you been? We were all sure you were dead."  
  
"Brazil. I think. Mostly."  
  
"And that's where--?" She gestured at his leg.  
  
"Yes. A spider bite that went rather badly."  
  
"How horrible."  
  
"Yes, well..."  
  
"Just...horrible."  
  
Silence dropped between them like an uninvited third. Norrington ignored an itch on his thigh, fingered the frame of his crutch absently. Took in the room in starts, noting the weak light that filtered through the windows, the fruit and flower still-lifes that hung on the walls, the dark, lace- edged handkerchief that Elizabeth tugged on in her hand.  
  
"Funny how life works out, isn't it, Mr. Norrington?" she said quietly, appearing riveted by the handkerchief herself. She twisted it. "I never would have thought that this would be where I'd be at age twenty six." She lifted her head. "What about you?"  
  
"I...I guess I imagined you'd still be in Port Royal...."  
  
"Well there's that, then, isn't there?" She managed to sniff and smile simultaneously. Then, with another lift of her chin: "Do you remember me, James?"  
  
Norrington straightened, motioning with confusion to the door as he said, "Of course, otherwise why would I--"  
  
"No, I don't mean do you remember who I am; I mean, do you remember my _life_? Who I _was_?"  
  
"Yes. Well--"  
  
"What I was _like_?"  
  
"Well. Um. Fiery, I suppose. Right? Or--"  
  
She lowered her head. "Fiery. Yes, something like that." She twisted the handkerchief.  
  
"Elizabeth.... What...." He pursed his lips. He had no idea how to broach the subject, had rather hoped she'd bring it up instead. Her demeanor seemed to indicate that the answer to the question he didn't want to ask would not be a happy one. Cholera again, perhaps? "Elizabeth?"  
  
"Yes?"  
  
His lips formed the word, but his throat held back the sound. Once he said it, he would know--probably before she spoke to answer it. He'd see it in her eyes, or the quiver of her chin, or the tug of that handkerchief. Hadn't he lost enough?  
  
"James? What is it?"  
  
He cleared his throat. "I'm sorry," he said. "I have to ask...."  
  
"Will." She dropped her head, pulled at the lacey cloth. "Will's gone. He's dead."  
  
Norrington had expected tears from her--he certainly felt as though he could shed some himself, but was stuck instead with a painful lump in his throat and a strong sense of what men did not do in front of other people-- or a stoic quietness perhaps, but not the cold edge that sliced through her words.  
  
"He went after you, when word came about the wreck. Stupid. So stupid." Her gaze pierced him. "By the time we'd heard about your wreck, months had passed since it had happened."  
  
"How--"  
  
"Did we hear? Bits of your ships--both of them--washed up on shore and were found. Enough bits--or enough crucial bits--that they were identified."  
  
"Shore?"  
  
"Oh, I don't know!" She squeezed her eyes closed, pressed the handkerchief against her lips for a second. Then: "All I know is that it took months for the ship that carried the men who'd made the discovery to return to Port Royal. And then...Will left. He got up a crew and a ship and there was no talking him out of it. I sent word to Jack, but not even Jack could talk to him."  
  
_Jack._ A time or two in the jungle as he was being held captive by people who ate their enemies, as he later fought beside those same people and shared in the reward of battle, as his leg festered and stank and turned black and then one day was gone--he'd had a fever; he hadn't even known they'd taken it until the fever cleared--a time or two in the jungle, he'd thought of Jack. And wished Jack was there.  
  
Instead of him.  
  
A small, warm satisfaction glowed in his stomach, however, at the thought that not even _Jack_ could talk Will out of going after him--unfortunately, the glow was dwarfed by the pain of knowing, finally, for sure, that Will was gone.  
  
From going after him.  
  
He leaned forward. "What then?"  
  
"Nothing. No word. Nothing. He's dead, James! I have this emptiness inside...." She laid a hand on her breast, bent her head. "He's not with me anymore. I know it."  
  
When she lifted her face, one ivory cheek glistened with a tear. "He's gone." 


	4. Chapter Four

Title: Between Wind and Tide, Chapter 3  
  
by Ruby Isabella  
  
Disclaimer: The following is fanfiction based on a property owned by Disney.  
  
Summary: Norrington returns to Port Royal after long absence  
  
Notes: Sequel to "A Windward Tide." Also, you might worry at times that this is not slash, but it is. Really. Cross my heart. Finally, it takes place some years after PotC.  
  
4.  
  
"It gets dark so early it seems lately," Elizabeth said, looking toward a window framed with heavy drapes. "I should get Estrella to light the lamps."  
  
"It's unusually cold, too, isn't it?"  
  
"Yes. It's horrid, don't you think? I recall that this was what London was like, when I was last there."  
  
"You were just a girl."  
  
"Mmm. A girl with the whole adventure of her life ahead of her. If I'd known then...." A sigh lifted her chest, then sagged her shoulders.  
  
"Oh come now. Your life is far from over. Do you plan on living in misery and self-pity for the entire rest of it?"  
  
"James!"  
  
He would have worried that he'd overstepped his bounds were it not for the much-welcomed light that shone in her eyes as she turned, eyebrows raised, lips curved into an "oh," toward him.  
  
"Well, someone had to tell you." He set down his drink. "And someone should tell me when I've overstayed my welcome." He reached for his crutch.  
  
"No! You must stay for supper. I never have company anymore. It's a pleasure I'm now realizing I've missed quite a lot. Please stay."  
  
Norrington filled his chest to protest, but the thought of taking another meal in a dark corner of the inn changed his mind.  
  
"I shan't take no for an answer, Mr. Norrington."  
  
"Well. If you insist."  
  
"Good!" She rose, catching her skirts with one hand. "I shall tell Estrella to set an extra place--and to light this lamp before we start walking into the furniture."  
  
~~~  
  
By the light of a single lamp, Norrington began to drowse in his chair. Elizabeth had not returned; presumably she was changing for dinner, or whatever it was that women did before sitting down for a meal. Estrella had refreshed his brandy, and that, as much as the flickering lamp, he blamed for his heavy eyelids.  
  
There seemed to come a rifling of the air, and then by his ear a voice said, "I know what you are."  
  
"Elizabeth?" He pressed an elbow against the chair's arm in preparation of sitting straight.  
  
"I know about you and Will."  
  
It _was_ Elizabeth. She came around the chair, her body bent so that her chin was level with his. The lamp cast flickering shades of orange against her cheeks. Her eyes seemed black in that light.  
  
Norrington pulled his back against the chair as a feeling of cold trepidation dropped through him like an anchor.  
  
Surely, she didn't mean.... "You've caught me dozing, I'm afraid." He tried to smile through his panic. "Startled me, in fact."  
  
"I'll bet I have." Her voice was soft, but her grin brought to mind a Jack- o-lantern on a lonely road long past sundown. Her skirts whished as she shifted to the side of the armchair and lowered herself until her chin rested on his shoulder. One of her hands, thin and pale, came to lie upon his thigh.  
  
He had a desire to move from under it; it felt like ice, and its aching cold sank into his trousers and the skin beneath.  
  
"I know about you and Will." Her breath skated along his jaw; he averted his head and opened his mouth to say...he knew not what.  
  
He lifted his elbow to reach for his crutch--if he could get up and pace, put a little breathing room between them, he could have the situation, whatever the hell it suddenly was, in hand--but the crutch rested against the table on the far side of her body. His arm bumped her bosom. He shrank away from her, and away from his crutch.  
  
"Elizabeth." His mouth was dry.  
  
"Oh, yes, I know." She lifted a bit, to speak in his ear. Her chest pressed his shoulder. "You liked my Will, didn't you?"  
  
His fingers clutched the chair's arms as though he was about to push himself up. He wasn't. He wasn't pushing himself anywhere, except flat on his face if he persisted. He began to feel as though he couldn't get enough air into his lungs. "Elizabeth, please, what is this--"  
  
Her hand on his thigh crept upward. "I know how your flesh came alive at his touch, at the sound of his voice...how the pit of your stomach warmed at his smile."  
  
"Elizabeth!" He clamped his hand down at the top of his thigh, barring her progress.  
  
"What about the first time, James? Do you remember it? Do you remember how nervous you were as you strode through town in the middle of the night, your back--and I daresay other parts of you--stiff as a rod, your chin lifted high, you acting for all the world as if you were out on important, _business-type_ business?"  
  
Norrington swallowed. His eyes had closed. His other hand came to help the first ward off her fingers, which felt delicate and brittle as he caught them in his hands, but writhed free like snakes.  
  
One of her nails cut a scratch down the inside of his ring finger.  
  
"Do you remember startling at the creak of the blacksmith shop door as you pushed it open, James? And jumping at the touch of Will's hand on yours in the dark?"  
  
*"Will?" Norrington had called out in a hoarse whisper without thinking. Gathering his wits, he'd followed up with a low, "Er, Turner, I mean. Is that you?" Will had responded with a tug on his arm and, "Shhh. Close the door."*  
  
"Do you remember his room? The narrow bed? The way it groaned when the two of you landed on top of it, trying to get out of your boots without letting go of each other?"  
  
*"Where's Brown?" he'd asked, pulling Will's shirt up from the bottom, feeling for the first time the skin of Will's back against his fingertips. Will used the weight of his body to push him onto his back before grinning down at him and saying, "Bought him a bottle, told him it was his birthday, and sent him upstairs to celebrate hours ago. He's dead out by now." He shifted his weight, and Norrington's crotch received the full effect of it.*  
  
His staccato breaths robbed him of oxygen. His fingertips tingled. His upper lip felt wet, and though he wished to wipe it he did not wish to risk taking either of his hands from his lap. Elizabeth's deft fingers were too strong of purpose; they had already once brushed where he most wished they would not.  
  
"Do you remember fucking him?" she asked. "Him fucking you?"  
  
"Stop it!" He twisted her fingers sharply, causing her to pull back finally with a soft yelp.  
  
"I'm sorry," he said, not looking at her. Looking, instead, at her fingers, cradled in her other hand, moving toward her own lap. "I'm sorry." He shoved behind her, still without meeting her eyes, to retrieve his crutch.  
  
Out of the chair, his backside felt cold and damp. He had been sweating more than he'd realized. His gaze darted to her feet as he stumbled over his goodbyes. Then he turned and, passing Estrella, presumably come to call them to dinner, her look of bewilderment garishly lit by the lamp she carried, he clomped toward the front door.  
  
Where he found himself stuck.  
  
"Damn it." He pulled at the handle, rattled it, pushed against it. No lamps had been lit in the foyer. The long windows to either side of the door were draped with heavy fabric; had they not been, Norrington still doubted that little light would be available to him; dusk had come on, and beyond the safety of the house, a fresh storm raged.  
  
He pounded at the heavy wooden door with the flat of his hand.  
  
His throat tightened.  
  
"Estrella!"  
  
What if she didn't come? What if Elizabeth came instead? Pressing his forehead against the wood, he continued rattling and jerking the door handle, hoping for the best. Hoping to get out.  
  
Over his racket, his ears picked up the swish of skirts. His heart banged against his chest. He was afraid to look, to see who it was.  
  
"Commodore?"  
  
Estrella's voice. He opened his eyes. Her lamp ensconced them in a circle of light. "Get me out of here," he pled.  
  
"Of course... you just need to turn the lock. Here." Her fingers did the work for him, and the sound of metal scraping allowed him to believe that he _would_ get out of the house.  
  
She began to pull the door open. In his clumsiness and haste, he slammed it back shut.  
  
"I'm sorry," he said. "I--"  
  
"It's all right." She waited, her hand on the handle, as he scuffled back, away from the door.  
  
"James."  
  
His shoulders stiffened at the sound of Elizabeth's voice. He hadn't heard the swish of her skirts. How long had she been standing behind them?  
  
"James, you said you were sorry, but, really, I'm the one who must apologize."  
  
He caught the edge of the door in his free hand as it came open. "I have to go," he said.  
  
He pivoted his crutch forward. The steady thrum of rain pouring down in front of him contrasted with the silence of the foyer behind him and made him fee caught between two worlds. The fresh air, however, cooled his face, and for the first time since he'd been wakened in the armchair, he felt he could breathe. He clutched at his jacket at the collar, preparing to descend the few steps that led to the walkway.  
  
"James, it's just that...."  
  
He chanced a glance over his shoulder.  
  
"You're all I have left."  
  
It was then that he realized that the water running down his cheeks was warmer than the rain that had begun to stream down into the back of his collar. 


	5. Chapter Five

Title: Between Wind and Tide, Chapter 3  
  
by Ruby Isabella  
  
Disclaimer: The following is fanfiction based on a property owned by Disney.  
  
Summary: Norrington returns to Port Royal after long absence  
  
Notes: Sequel to "A Windward Tide." Also, you might worry at times that this is not slash, but it is. Really. Cross my heart. Finally, it takes place some years after PotC.  
  
5.  
  
After his breakdown on Elizabeth's porch, and after his belly had been warmed and his senses dulled by the remainder of the decanter of brandy Estrella had brought for him, he had been sent to sleep in a small room upstairs, in a hard, narrow bed that, when he woke in the morning, left his body feeling as though it had been sleeping on the ground.  
  
He opened his eyes, wondering how to approach the new day. His mind wished to avoid the subject, just as it wished to avoid thinking about the night before. Instead, it pointed out to him that he was sleeping in a child's room. The walls had been painted white and on them hung neither portrait nor decoration. The bed was dressed in a plain, dark spread. But still he knew that it was--once--a child's room.  
  
The room was under the eaves. Thin, gray light filtered through a dormer window. A nail here and there, on the wall opposite the slope of the roof, indicated where pictures had once hung--all were lower than one would expect in an adult's room.  
  
He didn't want to get out of bed. Settling onto his back, he carefully closed his eyes against a threatening headache.  
  
A rap on the door made him wince, then jump to a sitting position. "Just a minute." He pulled back the covers to find that he was still properly dressed, albeit coatless and shoeless and a bit rumpled. He swung his foot off the bed, then pressed his suddenly throbbing temples with his fingertips before saying, "Yes?"  
  
"Thought you might want to wash up, Commodore," Estrella said as she pushed through the door with a porcelain bowl in her hands. Water sloshed like the sea against the bowl's sides. "I'll just set it here." Alongside she set a towel that had been folded over her arm. "And when you're ready for breakfast, just show your face in the kitchen."  
  
"Thank you, Estrella, and it's not....Commodore."  
  
"Yes, Mr. Norrington. Will you be needing anything else?"  
  
"No. Thank you."  
  
The water felt cool against his eyelids--cool and refreshing enough that he hobbled back to the bed with the bowl in the crook of his arm. Once seated, with his crutch discarded at the end of the bed, he again dipped his hands into the water to wet his face.  
  
Eventually, he was forced to think about his situation, while trying at the same time to not think about sobbing in Elizabeth's arms.  
  
She'd been understanding; more understanding than he had been of what she must be going through.  
  
They'd gone through the same thing, really, hadn't they? The loss of everything? She'd had it taken from her one piece at a time and he, apart from his leg, felt as though he'd lost everything all at once, upon his return to Port Royal. If he hadn't come back, he'd never have known.  
  
~~~  
  
"Well you look better. Pale, and a bit squinty perhaps, but better." Elizabeth smiled up at him from one end of the kitchen table. In one hand she held a slice of toast; in the other a knife coated with jam.  
  
He cleared his throat. Estrella set a small plate and a butter knife in front of a chair opposite Elizabeth.  
  
"Morning," he said with a nod. His gaze avoided both Elizabeth and Estrella. Instead, he saw the tops of chairbacks, the corner of a large, farm-style sink.  
  
"Don't just stand there," Elizabeth said, waving her knife at the empty chair.  
  
Noiselessly, Estrella pulled the chair out and then waited by it as he settled himself. As she reached to relieve him of his crutch, he found himself reluctant to give it over. His heart quickened when she turned away with it in her hands. She leaned it in the crook of the table and the next chair down. His face cooled with relief; he wouldn't have to ask for it when he needed it. It was difficult enough being forced to rely on a crutch without the complication of relying on others to fetch the crutch. Were he older, had he been allowed to grow more pompous and self-entitled before he'd lost his leg, he might have fallen into the role more easily: "You. Fetch my crutch." He didn't know where along the way the ability to be that man had gotten lost, but he felt he'd had the makings of him in him once, a long, long time ago. Maybe that man had floated away in the sea.  
  
Or maybe when he'd swallowed a boiled piece of the heart of a man he'd killed in an attack against a rival tribe, he'd taken on a part of that man, and lost a part of himself.  
  
"How did you sleep? You almost ended up sleeping on that uncomfortable sofa, you know. Estrella and I together had a time of it getting you up those stairs."  
  
Vaguely he remembered wanting to curl up on the landing and being prodded and shoved onward and upward instead. "Sorry."  
  
Elizabeth waved her hand. "My fault. First I scared you half to death, then I inebriated you. I've obviously suffered a loss of social skills."  
  
Norrington studied the steaming stream of tea that Estrella poured into his cup.  
  
"That was a bit of a joke, James."  
  
He saw that she had raised her eyebrows at him. The world around him-- Elizabeth included, this morning--appeared totally, perfectly, and insanely normal. It was he who was out of whack.  
  
"I'm sorry. Not awake yet."  
  
"Was it the bed? I know it's awfully small, but it was the first room we came to, and we'd had a time of it just getting you there. Tonight you'll use the guest room, with the big boy bed, all right? Do you have much at the inn?"  
  
Norrington lifted his face. "What?"  
  
"Estrella has some errands, and I was going to send her for your things while she was out. Would they be too much for Estrella on her own, do you think? Should I send for someone else to bring them?"  
  
"Elizabeth.... No. Surely you don't...."  
  
"What? Of course you should stay here. You must! My father would beat at his coffin if I let you stay at that...establishment."  
  
Norrington stared open-mouthed at the woman who, in the clear light of morning looked everything like the young lady he'd proposed to years ago and nothing like the pale siren whose fingers had climbed his thigh in the fiery lamplight the night before.  
  
Nothing like the woman who had known all about him and Will.  
  
"So it's settled," she said when he didn't respond.  
  
_"Do you remember fucking him?"_ came unbidden to his mind. He lost his hold on his teaspoon. It clattered against the table. A tan stain spread on the white table cloth. "No," he said quietly. "It's not settled. I have-- I can't."  
  
"James. Really. Listen to reason."  
  
He took hold of his crutch, pushed his chair back as he rose. "I have appointments--"  
  
"Appointments?"  
  
"The governor.... Others...." He had nothing. His momentum slowed as he crossed the room, trying to work out a lie.  
  
"Well go to your appointments, of course. I'm not saying I would keep you prisoner."  
  
"Elizabeth--"  
  
"What? What is it?"  
  
"My God, what would people think?" _"Him fucking you?"_ He couldn't stay with her, not with her knowing. How could he?  
  
"I don't give a damn what people think. You and I and God will know that you're an old friend sleeping in my guest room, and you and I and God are the only three whose opinions matter in this matter."  
  
Her mouth was both pink and stubborn. A determined blush had risen to her cheeks.  
  
Norrington wondered how the woman standing before him could also have been the woman who'd whispered in his ear the night before.  
  
"It's a girl, isn't it?" she asked, crossing her arms, cocking her hip. "It's a girl, and you don't want her to think that you and I.... You know."  
  
She wasn't the woman from the night before. Norrington adjusted the crutch under his armpit. He'd dozed in the chair, dreamed a dream as vivid as the one that had made him think he was back in the jungle, and then Elizabeth had touched him to waken him and he'd crushed her fingers and hobbled for the door.  
  
"Fine," she said. "Stay at the inn. The dark, drafty, smelly, unclean inn...." Her gaze drifted toward the wall, probably so that he wouldn't see the wet shine that had come to her eyes.  
  
"There's no girl," he said.  
  
"So what is it?"  
  
"I'm--I'm just... I'm having trouble adjusting to this. All of it."  
  
She nodded at the wall.  
  
"I'll stay."  
  
She turned her face with a smile that made him think of early spring afternoons.  
  
"You will? Really? Estrella, come here! Your things--"  
  
"There's just a change of clothes, but I--"  
  
"Nonsense. Estrella can carry back a change of clothes, can't you, dear? Now hurry and get cleaned up. You don't want to miss your appointment with the governor."  
  
He opened his mouth to confess that his appointment had been a fabrication, but before he could fashion the right words, he found himself caught in a hug that left him grappling for his balance once released from it.  
  
"I'm so glad you've returned!" With a fresh smile and a flourish of skirts, Elizabeth turned and left the room. 


	6. Chapter Six

Title: Between Wind and Tide  
  
Author/Pseudonym: Ruby Isabella  
  
Rating: R  
  
Disclaimer: The following is fanfiction based on a property owned by Disney.  
  
Summary: Norrington returns to Port Royal after long absence  
  
Notes: Sequel to "A Windward Tide." Also, you might worry at times that this is not slash, but it is. Really. Cross my heart. Finally, it takes place some years after PotC.  
  
6.  
  
The road was muddy and puddled, but the rain for the moment had abated and the sun must have been shining somewhere above the clouds for the clouds had turned a promising white rather than their usual dull, heavy gray.  
  
Norrington recognized the two men--or, not the men exactly, but their purpose--the moment they wheeled around the corner onto the street up which he walked. Recognition lighted their faces as well.  
  
"There y'are, Commodore!" the rounder of the two midshipmen called.  
  
"Where've ya been?" asked the other. "You just up and disappeared." This one clasped Norrington's arm, though not with unnecessary force--a one- legged man wasn't going to flee with extraordinary speed. Or grace. The petty officer who had spoken first fell in step on Norrington's crutch side.  
  
"I don't see that it's any of your business," said Norrington, allowing them to lead him in same direction he'd been walking anyway.  
  
"Guess it's not," said the one at his arm with a shrug.  
  
"Nope. Our business is to get you to the governor's. Apparently you've been having trouble finding your way."  
  
He took comfort in the fact that their appearance lent truth to the story he'd given Elizabeth.  
  
"'Cause surely," the petty officer continued, "you wouldn't be ignoring the governor's invites."  
  
"No. Not me."  
  
~~~  
  
"Well, you're owed some back pay, Commodore" said Evans, standing on one side of a great mahogany desk. His barrel chest lifted the ruff of his collar so that it buried his chin as he said the words "Well," "back," and "pay."  
  
Norrington, seated in a hard, wooden chair on the other side of the desk with his crutch leaning against the inside of his thigh, watched Evans bring a wallet out of one of the desk's drawers.  
  
"This is just an installment, but it should be more than enough to cover your needs, and the rest will be paid out on a regular basis till you're caught up. In addition to your regular pay, of course."  
  
"It's not 'Commodore' any longer," Norrington said, not moving to take the wallet.  
  
"Bucking for a promotion, eh? I daresay you--"  
  
"I no longer consider myself in the King's service."  
  
"Perhaps you just need to think it over. Wouldn't want to do anything rash, would we?"  
  
"I'd hardly call it rash. I've had a few years to 'think it over.'"  
  
Evans weighed the wallet in his hand before sighing and setting it on the corner of the desk. "That money's still yours, and more to come. Regardless." He turned to the windows. "Hell of a run of bad weather we've been having, eh?"  
  
Norrington chose not to comment.  
  
Evans turned back. "Tea? I daresay I've been drinking the stuff by the barrel lately. This damned weather."  
  
Dutifully, Norrington followed Evans into a sitting room where, in a moment, a maid brought in a tray of tea and cucumber sandwiches. It came as no surprise to him that Evans had planned on tea. He did feel a little bad that tea would not be the comfortable, convivial affair Evans had likely been planning on.  
  
"So. What are your plans, Norrington?" Evans asked as he lifted a steaming cup toward his lips.  
  
"Plans. Well. None. So far."  
  
"Staying here? Going away? Anything?"  
  
Norrington, his tea untouched, glanced toward a window as though to contemplate his locale. Nothing came to mind. "No idea."  
  
"I wish you'd reconsider your old-- Well, it wouldn't be your old job, quite." Evans's gaze made a quick reference to his crutch. "But there's a place for you with the Royal Navy. Or.... Well, with the Navy."  
  
Norrington had caught a flash of expression in Evans's face that told him that Evans had been about to offer a position in the governance of the settlement; or, rather, he'd caught the flash of expression that showed Evans wasn't sure he liked Norrington enough to make that offer.  
  
"Thank you, but....really. No."  
  
Evans, shaking his head, set down his cup. "I daresay you're making a mistake. A man needs a purpose in life, and the Navy would give you one."  
  
"Thank you. No. If...If you'll excuse me...." He pushed the chair back, rising.  
  
"Yes. Of course. Well." Evans, too, rose and began to follow. "Oh, your pay....."  
  
"Send it to the Inn to cover my bill. And the Abernath's. I owe them for some clothing...and a wig, which I'm afraid I've lost." He approached the door to the hallway. "The rest send to Miss Swann."  
  
"To--?"  
  
"Mrs. Turner. I'll get it straight." He hobbled through the doorway. The front door loomed welcome ahead of him.  
  
"Norrington? Have you lost your mind?"  
  
Norrington, his eye on the door and the fresh, rainy air of freedom, ignored him.  
  
~~~  
  
"Lunch," Norrington said to the barkeep. He dropped into a chair at a table by the bar at the inn.  
  
"It's stew today," said the barkeep as he set a short, crusty loaf of bread in front of Norrington. "And someone came and collected your things."  
  
"Someone else will be along to pay off my bill."  
  
"Oh come now, you've no bill here."  
  
"The room, the food--" He glanced toward the bar. "--the drink."  
  
"You owe nothin', Commodore. It's been a right--"  
  
Norrington's jaw tightened. When he spoke next, his voice was low, but authoritative. "Just let me be a man and pay what I owe."  
  
"Fine, sir. Anything you'd like, Comm-."  
  
"It's not 'Commodore.'"  
  
"Sure, sir, Mr. Norrington. Something to drink?"  
  
"Tea."  
  
"Just tea?"  
  
"Yes. Thank you."  
  
While the barkeep was gone, Norrington drummed his fingers on the tabletop. An itch had come over him; he felt as though he was beginning to waken.  
  
"Tea." The barkeep set a pot and a cup in front of him.  
  
"Do you know...." Norrington's heartbeat picked up at the thought of what he'd suddenly had the desire to ask.  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"Do you know of any ships pulling out?"  
  
"There's one tomorrow, I think. Bound for England, I believe, if that's where you're looking to go."  
  
Norrington, lifting the pot to pour a stream of steaming tea into his cup, nodded. "That'll do."  
  
~~~  
  
Estrella let him in and offered to take his coat. "She's in the parlor."  
  
He'd thought he'd seen her face at the parlor window as he'd come up the walk. He nodded to Estrella and headed onward.  
  
"I don't think I can take one more day of this weather, James," Elizabeth said as he came in. She still stood at the window, gazing out.  
  
"Had enough of merry old England, have you?"  
  
"Yes. I'm quite ready to get back to having it feel like Bermuda around here--heat, humidity, large bugs and all. How did your meeting go?"  
  
"Well as can be expected."  
  
Elizabeth lifted her hand and placed her fingertips against the window's glass. "James?"  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"I was thinking, while you were gone." She turned. "Last night, too."  
  
"About?"  
  
"We almost got married once, you and me."  
  
"That we did."  
  
She turned once again to the window, touching its glass again. Norrington leaned on his crutch, waiting.  
  
"Why don't we do it, then?"  
  
"Excuse me?"  
  
"Why don't we marry?" Once again she turned toward him. "Oh, I know it's improper for the woman to ask, but I.... Doesn't it just sound right, James? We're all that's left, you and me, and I am fond of you, as you are of me, or you wouldn't have asked me to marry you in the first place, right?" She held her breath in the silence that followed and then, seeing that Norrington had no words to fill it, she went on, her cheeks bright red, her hands pulling at one another. "Of course that was a long time ago. I understand. But think about it James--doesn't it make sense? James?"  
  
"I...." He moved backward, leaned against the back of the sofa. "Elizabeth, I'm leaving. Tomorrow."  
  
"What?"  
  
"For England."  
  
"So soon? You never mentioned...." Her fingers twisted with each other. "Right. Well. I couldn't leave. Everyone I know is buried here, you know. Well, most everyone."  
  
"Elizabeth, I'm sorry...."  
  
"You apologize an awful lot."  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Yes." She turned toward the window. By the soft shudder of her shoulders, he knew that she was upset, but he didn't know how to fix it. What she'd said did make sense, in a way, except how did one marry one's ex lover's widow?  
  
He pushed away from the couch. He had no luck in approaching stealthily, not even with the carpet to aid him, but she kept her back to him anyway. Her hand rose to bring her handkerchief to her face to blot a tear on her cheek. Norrington, feeling awkward, leaned once again on his crutch and set his free hand on her shoulder.  
  
She glanced at him, her eyes wet with tears, her cheeks streaked. "I'm sorry," she said. "I don't know what--"  
  
"No, it's all right."  
  
She searched his eyes. Then, with the same swiftness she'd shown in hugging him that morning, she lifted up and kissed him on the mouth.  
  
It had been a long, long time.  
  
Her lips tasted salty, and they were soft. And warm. And gentle.  
  
He pulled back. "I'm sorry."  
  
"There you go again," she said in a quiet voice.  
  
"I've never...."  
  
"What?"  
  
"...with a woman." He took a step back, touching his mouth with his fingertips.  
  
Her eyes widened. Her lips formed the shape of surprise. "Never? But surely.... You were in the navy. You stopped at ports....."  
  
He shook his head.  
  
"In the jungle? You told me you'd stayed with...with Indians...but you didn't, not even with....?"  
  
*A brown body crouched by his pallet--brown because all of the bodies, except his, were brown. The whites of Jupicahy's eyes showed in the dark as he stared into Norrington's face, presumably wondering whether he was awake. When Norrington stared back, without moving, Jupicahy smiled and stretched beside him on the pallet. "You too pale," he said, keeping his words simple; although Norrington had caught on to the language, the Indians seemed unable to talk to him as they did to each other. Jupicahy put a finger on Norrington's thigh, the bandages on which still became bloody at times. Jupicahy's finger lay higher than the bandages. "Now you no have enough feet. No woman want you for husband."*  
  
"No," he said to Elizabeth. "It wasn't...." He ran out of words. No way to explain. He pulled at his waistcoat.  
  
Elizabeth shook her head. He body remained facing him, but her face turned once more toward the window. "That's not fair. Now I want you more you than ever."  
  
Norrington, taken aback, said, "What?"  
  
"You're a treasure." She bit her lower lip as though to keep from crying again.  
  
"I...." He pointed behind him. "Things to do."  
  
She nodded.  
  
He met Estrella again in the foyer.  
  
"I put your things upstairs. Let me show you to the guest room."  
  
"Yes, uh.... Thank you."  
  
When she swept open the door to his room for the night, Norrington felt almost as though he had to grip the wall. He was accustomed to the ground, somewhat accustomed to the narrow beds in both the inn and the room he'd spent the previous night in. He was not accustomed to the oversized room, the fireplace, the four-poster bed, the tall windows dressed in dark blue velvets and light blue silks....  
  
"I put your clothes in the wardrobe."  
  
"Thank you."  
  
"Are you going to go in?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
Still he stood there.  
  
"Mrs. Turner had me find you some night clothes. They're in the wardrobe, too."  
  
"Thank you."  
  
She waited another moment before stepping back. "Well, I'll leave you to it. Dinner will be ready in a few hours."  
  
"Yes. Thank you."  
  
When he heard her feet descending the stairs, he finally stepped into the room. The bed was twice as high as any he'd slept in recently. He crossed to it and pressed on it with his hand, testing its height against his perceived ability to climb onto it.  
  
A knock came.  
  
"Yes?"  
  
The door opened a foot and Estrella's face appeared. "Would you like a fire, to take out the chill?"  
  
Half of him wanted to say not to trouble herself; the other half wanted the fire. He let the latter win out.  
  
When she had gone again, he came to stand in front of the fireplace, allowing the fire to dry him out--he hadn't felt dry since the rain first started to fall, one day out from Port Royal.  
  
Not even with an Indian woman, he thought.  
  
*His chest had expanded with air as he'd gathered courage to say the first thing that had come to mind in response to Jupicahy's statement about the women of the village. "I don't want a woman," came out finally. Jupicahy's teeth had flashed white in the darkness. "You make do with me." His finger drew higher up Norrington's thigh. "Okay," was all that he could manage in response.*  
  
~~~  
  
Elizabeth was absent from dinner; Estrella told him she'd begged off on account of a headache.  
  
"She sends her apologies."  
  
She stayed in her room, too, after dinner, until the hour grew late enough that Norrington decided he had no reason to continue to linger in the parlor.  
  
"Off to bed, then?" Estrella asked, popping her head out of the kitchen as he passed.  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Early morning, isn't it? I'll bet you're excited."  
  
"I...well, yes, I suppose." He hadn't thought of it. Yes, when he'd made the decision, his heart had quickened, but the further he walked away from the port, the more his enthusiasm abated. It wasn't that he'd been overcome with misgivings; the feeling had simply dulled, until, as he crossed the threshold into Elizabeth's house, he was barely thinking of it at all, except as news that he had to somehow--badly, as it turned out--impart.  
  
He took off to his room, undressed, and managed to climb onto the bed on the first try and without much more than a single soft grunt of exertion. Once in bed, he lay silently with the blankets up to his armpits and his hands folded on his sternum.  
  
He wished things had gone better all around. First dreaming that she knew about him and Will, then crushing her fingers when all she'd been trying to do was wake him. Their reunion could certainly have gone better.  
  
"First I scared you half to death, then I inebriated you," she'd said at breakfast, taking the blame onto her self.  
  
He sat up, at once disbelieving the connection his brain suddenly made. What if actually had been touching him where he'd dreamed she had?  
  
What if her hand, sliding up his thigh, had launched the dream?  
  
His heart ached at the realization of how lonely she must be, watching through the parlor window day after day with no one coming to see her because everyone she'd ever loved was dead.  
  
Her shock at learning that he'd never been with a woman came back to him. She had assumed him to be more experienced than he was, and she had gotten him wrong.  
  
He'd gotten her wrong.  
  
Was she lying awake in bed tormenting herself over what she'd done wrong, and gotten wrong?  
  
Slowly he settled back onto his pillow.  
  
She'd made him think of Jupicahy. He wondered if he'd be alive if it hadn't been for Jupicahy. This morning, Evans had said that a man needed a purpose in life, and indeed he did. When he'd lost his leg, the last hope he'd had of returning to civilization bled out of him. How could a one-legged man drag himself out of the jungle and over the ocean?  
  
But then Jupicahy had come and given him a reason to wake up the next morning, and the next.  
  
Had it been love? No.  
  
Salvation?  
  
It had saved him.  
  
He closed his eyes.  
  
~~~  
  
A knock came at the door as he plucked the cuff of his shirt free from the cuff of his jacket, making it look proper. He found that as long as he didn't concentrate too strongly on what his fingers were doing, they went about on their own taking care of buttons and ruffles and such; they had a better memory than he did.  
  
"Yes?"  
  
The door opened. He turned, expecting Estrella.  
  
"I apologize for missing your farewell dinner. Let's make it a farewell breakfast?"  
  
"Elizabeth."  
  
"It must have been the crying. Or the weather. I developed this horrid headache. I could barely hold my head up."  
  
"Are you feeling better?"  
  
"Much. Yes. Thank you. Well, all things considered, that is."  
  
"Elizabeth, I have to tell you--"  
  
She shook her head. "Let's just leave it at goodbye. Perhaps one day I'll sail over to see you. Or you'll come back here, and we'll have--"  
  
"I'm not going."  
  
"James?"  
  
"I'm not leaving today."  
  
"Was the ship held up?"  
  
"No. It's going on. I'm not. I'm...." His hands shook. With the crutch nestled in his armpit, he rubbed his palms together to stop the shaking. "I wasn't very good at this the first time, if I recall."  
  
"At what? Leaving Port Royal? You--"  
  
"Elizabeth. Will you marry me?" 


	7. Chapter Seven

Title: Between Wind and Tide  
  
Author/Pseudonym: Ruby Isabella  
  
Rating: R  
  
Disclaimer: The following is fanfiction based on a property owned by Disney.  
  
Summary: Norrington returns to Port Royal after long absence  
  
Notes: Sequel to "A Windward Tide." Also, you might worry at times that this is not slash, but it is. Really. Cross my heart. Finally, it takes place some years after PotC.  
  
7.  
  
"When should we do it?" she asked after breakfast.  
  
"Well, um...." Part of him didn't want to be rash, but at the same time that part of him could pose no good argument against the marriage, apart from the obvious, which he had already been willing to give up once to marry Elizabeth, so why not now? "...anytime?"  
  
"I would hate to do it in this weather. It's so dismal."  
  
"When the weather clears then."  
  
"On the other hand, a wedding, even a small one--I don't need anything formal again, just you and me, Estrella.... Where was I? Oh, on the other hand, a small wedding could be just the sunshine I need in this dreary weather. It feels like a weight constantly pressing down on me. Doesn't it you?"  
  
He nodded absently. Marriage. Being linked to someone, under God, under the law. Like the sea, she would always be there for him. But also, like the sea, marriage, women...Elizabeth...they all had their mysteries. His gaze took in her body; his mind wondered what one did with a woman's body, exactly.  
  
Was it true that they got no pleasure from love-making? He shifted, remembering her hand on him that first night.  
  
"The sooner the better," Elizabeth said. "Do you agree?"  
  
His focus returned to the moment. "Don't we need Will declared.... You know."  
  
Her expression changed, but Norrington wasn't sure how to read it. Her skin seemed to tighten over her cheekbones, and hollows appeared both beneath them and her eyes.  
  
"Right," she said. She twisted her fingers. "Right. I wonder how long that will take." She didn't seem to be speaking to him, but to herself. Her voice had an inward quality to it.  
  
"Elizabeth?"  
  
She looked up. "He's already been declared missing. The rest shouldn't...."  
  
"I'm sorry." He hated bringing Will up.  
  
"You apologize too much."  
  
"Yes."  
  
A silence stretched between them until finally Norrington cleared his throat. "So, once that's done, we'll...we'll be free to marry."  
  
"Yes."  
  
"It could take a while. We may have to wait a certain amount of time before we can even start the proceedings."  
  
"Yes. Yes, I suppose that might be the case. I'm sorry," she said suddenly, pulling her handkerchief out.  
  
"Sorry? For what?"  
  
She dabbed at the corner of one eye. "I couldn't stand to lose anyone else, not so soon. Not until I'm an old woman, please." This last was a whisper, and a plea to God, not to him.  
  
He slid to the floor. Kneeling was something he was still able to do; he'd gotten plenty of practice during the months he'd spent--without his makeshift crutch--in a Portuguese jail waiting to learn what they would do with him.  
  
He took her hand. "Elizabeth, you're not losing me. I'll be right here. If it takes a month, a year, a decade...."  
  
She sniffed. Her eyes were wet, but she smiled. "I'm being silly, I know. I'm sorry."  
  
"You're not being silly. I understand." He had her hand in both of his. So delicate. So small. He pressed his lips to the back of it, then his forehead. A cold image of arriving alone in London, knowing no one, having no place to go and no purpose to pursue, twisted his stomach with the thought of the mistake he'd almost made. He would find a purpose here in Port Royal, with Elizabeth at his side. Together they'd pull out of the past, finally, and put together a future.  
  
~~~  
  
"Look! Look what I've got." Elizabeth breezed into the room, trying to at once peel off her gloves and show him the papers she held clamped under her arm.  
  
Norrington used his crutch to pull himself up from the chair.  
  
"Here, look." Crumpling the gloves in one hand, she pulled the papers free and thrust them forward.  
  
"What is it?" He flipped through the pages, but Elizabeth's excitement made it impossible to take in the words. He looked at her, waiting.  
  
"A week. We can do it in a week."  
  
His eyebrows went up. He looked back at the papers.  
  
"A week." She moved toward the window as her fingers worked the buttons on her coat. "With any luck, a week will be all we need for this weather to turn around." She whirled. "Oh think of it, James! We'll be married!"  
  
"I...." He shuffled the pages again, then looked up once more. "I really don't remember you being this excited about marriage the first time we thought we might have a go at it."  
  
A touch of the rosyness in her cheeks paled. She said nothing.  
  
"Right," he said, looking back down at the crisp pages. "You didn't actually want to marry me that time."  
  
"Oh, I'm sorry James. It was a different time."  
  
"No, it's all right. I can handle being second choice. I _was_ second choice, right? Sparrow wasn't in the running, too, was he?"  
  
She smiled, shaking out her gloves. "Now do I strike you as that foolish?"  
  
He lifted an eyebrow.  
  
"Well I'm not. And now I'm going to go put these things in the closet. Is Estrella out?"  
  
"I think so. Speaking of Sparrow...."  
  
"Yes?"  
  
He followed her to the coat closet. "You said you had him try to talk Will out of going."  
  
She paused for half a second with a wooden hanger in her hand as though thinking. Then: "Yes. Yes, I did." She draped the coat on the hanger. "Why?"  
  
"This is going to sound...well, silly...."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Well, when he failed to talk Will out of it...."  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"...did he join him?"  
  
Elizabeth laughed. "Oh heavens no."  
  
Norrington let out a breath he hadn't realized was holding.  
  
"You know Jack: nothing in it for him, he's not interested." She shut the door to the coat closet.  
  
Yes, he knew Sparrow all right, and knew pretty well the types of things the man was interested in--anyone in a skirt. Or trousers. And the more difficult to woo, to use Sparrow's terminology, the better. His stomach soured at the memory of Sparrow's brown fingers dancing across the back of his hand. Once.  
  
"Whatever happened to old Jack anyway?" he said feeling rather better knowing that Jack and Will hadn't sailed off the face of the earth together.  
  
"Oh, I don't know. He hasn't been around these parts in ages." Dropping onto a chair in the parlor, she said, "Likely he's traveled to the other side of the earth, ever in search of treasure. I could send word out, invite him to the wedding...."  
  
"That's all right, thank you."  
  
She smiled. "Have a seat. We have plans to make."  
  
~~~  
  
Darkness crept into the parlor, chasing the shadows across the room until they finally gathered in groups at the edge of the circle of light thrown off by the fireplace.  
  
Norrington had the sofa; Elizabeth a chair. A cup and saucer, compliments of Estrella, were balanced on Norrington's knee.  
  
Wedding plans had been made, as well as tentative plans for their lives post-wedding. Now a silence had settled between him and Elizabeth. He lifted his tea to his lips.  
  
"You're a virgin," Elizabeth said suddenly, turning a sparkling eye toward him.  
  
He almost spilled his tea. "Yes. Yes, you could say that." His cheeks grew hot. He certainly wasn't going to explain the truth of the matter; if she wanted to equate his never having slept with a woman with virginity, he wouldn't argue otherwise.  
  
Allowing her to think that way had the advantage of giving him an excuse for the awkwardness he imagined might happen on their wedding night.  
  
Certainly the wedding night wouldn't be difficult, he told himself. Hundreds of thousand of men had managed to bed women--possibly that many men in just the past year. Once he got the trick of it, it would be fine. How different could women be from men, anyway?  
  
His mind went blank at the question. Apart from bosoms and some private bits he'd heard sailors speak of, he had no idea.  
  
"Tell me. Are you going to hold onto it until your wedding day?" she asked.  
  
"Hold...uh.... I suppose if I've gone this long...."  
  
With a nod and a secretive smile, she said, "All right." Then she set her teacup and saucer on the table beside her chair. "So."  
  
He watched her come toward the sofa, turning his head to continue watching as she settled beside him with one leg tucked under her skirts.  
  
"What about men?"  
  
Panic jumped in his belly.  
  
"Men?" The teacup rattled against its saucer. He clamped it silent with his other hand.  
  
"Men. Were there any besides Will?"  
  
The hand doing the clamping slipped and took with it the cup.  
  
"Damn!" He pulled free of her, letting the spilled cup and the saucer slide to the soft, grabbing his crutch, pulling himself to his foot. "Ouch. Hot. Damn." His face, he was sure, was a shade of red far darker than the flames in the fireplace.  
  
"Oh no, James. I'm sorry. That was all my fault. Are you all right?"  
  
"Am I awake?"  
  
"What? Of course you're awake. Why--"  
  
He rubbed the wet stain on his trousers. The skin beneath still smarted.  
  
"James?"  
  
"What are you saying?" he asked finally, pulling his shoulders back, lifting his chin.  
  
"What--?"  
  
"About me. Will. What-- Good God, what are you saying?"  
  
She started to shake her head, slowly.  
  
"What?" he asked.  
  
She rose from the couch. He scuffled back a step as she approached, but what was he afraid of? He stopped, his heart racing, and her fingers touched his chest.  
  
"I told you. I know about that."  
  
"About what?"  
  
As her fingers curled, he felt his shirt pull tight, and then he felt himself leaning toward her.  
  
He watched her lips, poised not half a foot from his, as she spoke. "You. And Will. I know everything you did together."  
  
"How?"  
  
"How? Why...Will. He--"  
  
"He told you?" His voice cracked in disbelief.  
  
"A-huh." Her lips loomed closer.  
  
He wiped his temple, which he found was damp. Her eyelids seemed to have thickened. They began to droop, and her lips moved another inch closer.  
  
He clutched the crossbar of his crutch. His breaths came not from his chest but from his stomach.  
  
"What'd he tell you?" he whispered.  
  
He watched her lips smile. She emphasized every syllable in "Everything."  
  
"Where are you going?" she asked as he turned away. His shirt pulled free of her fingers. Her fingers slid along the side of his arm before falling away.  
  
"I need some air."  
  
"James?"  
  
"I need air. A walk."  
  
"James, don't stay out too late." 


	8. Chapter Eight

Title: Between Wind and Tide  
  
Author/Pseudonym: Ruby Isabella  
  
Rating: R  
  
Disclaimer: The following is fanfiction based on a property owned by Disney.  
  
Summary: Norrington returns to Port Royal after long absence  
  
Notes: Sequel to "A Windward Tide." Also, you might worry at times that this is not slash, but it is. Really. Cross my heart. Finally, it takes place some years after PotC.  
  
8.  
  
He gripped his jacket collar closed with his free hand as he hobbled toward the street. Though the air itself felt warmer than it had since his arrival in Port Royal, he felt chilled to the bone; yet his face still perspired. He blamed that on the mortal embarrassment he'd suffered at Elizabeth's words.  
  
And here he'd been thinking he'd dreamt it all the other night.  
  
As he stepped through Elizabeth's gate and onto the road, he imagined he could feel her gaze on his back. He imagined her standing in the parlor window, waiting for him to return.  
  
As he hopped slowly toward town, his mind turned backward.  
  
*** He'd woken early one morning to find the village chief crouched beside him, nudging his shoulder.  
  
"Norr'ton. You wake."  
  
He pushed himself onto an elbow, blinked at the chief. "What is it?"  
  
"Go with Wira'una today. Take things."  
  
Wira'una, the chief's son. When Norrington rolled on his pallet, he saw the indian standing some feet off with two other men from the village--Jaci and Aritana. The sun hung beyond their heads, forcing Norrington to squint. He was unable to read their expressions.  
  
"Where going?" he asked the chief, sliding into the manner of speech they used when speaking to him.  
  
"Long walk. Take things." The chief waved his hand in a circle, palm facing the ground, indicating that Norrington was to bring everything. He took the fact that he was going to bring his belong with him to be a good sign--if they were going to kill him, they'd probably rather he left his things behind--not that he had many things.  
  
"Leave soon?" he asked.  
  
"Leave now."  
  
"Need to say good--"  
  
The chief cut him off with an impatient grunt. "Leave now. Aritana help get things."  
  
The three men who were to accompany him began their accompanying the moment he rose from his pallet with his crutch shoved in his armpit. Aritana had scooped Norrington's few articles of clothes and the medals from his uniform into a rough blanket in the time it took Norrington to gain his feet. Aritana pushed the package into his free arm.  
  
Norrington noticed that each of the three men carried a machete and a pouch of water. Spears were strapped to their backs.  
  
"Yours," Jaci said, pulling a spare water skin from his shoulder. Norrington ducked his head so that Jaci could hang it on him.  
  
He stood three inches taller than the tallest of the young warriors, even on his crutch.  
  
"Follow," Wira'una said, waving his hand.  
  
Norrington's pallet lay on the edge of the village, and from there they skirted the village to reach the main path into the jungle. Norrington glanced over at the long, low buildings of the village with every step, wondering if he was to ever return.  
  
Just as they reached the path, Norrington's visual search finally netted him what he was after: Jupicahy's face. It bobbed for a second over a stand of brush, then disappeared, then reappeared again beyond the brush, its features obscured by smoke from a fire. Then Jupicahy's face was clear. The whites of his eyes were wide. His brow had deep creases. He jogged toward the party of four.  
  
Jaci mumbled something meant for Aritana and Wira'una's ears. Norrington heard only the sound of the voice and not its words; he had turned to watch Jupicahy approach. A hand closed on his arm and tugged.  
  
"Leave now."  
  
"Let me say goodbye."  
  
"Leave _now_." The tug on his arm became a jerk. The water in Norrington's pouch sloshed.  
  
Aritana had jogged toward Jupicahy, arms out. He called to Jupicahy, and then, stopping him, began talking. They were too far away for Norrington to understand. And then Jupicahy was leaning across Aritana's outstretched arm and yelling toward him, even as Jaci urged Norrington to come.  
  
Wira'una threw his arm around Norrington's shoulder and forced him to turn away.  
  
A lump expanded in Norrington's throat. It was obvious now why they were taking him away from the village. He risked a glance back at Jupicahy, who was being held back by two other men, in addition to Aritana. Someone must have seen them. Someone must have told.  
  
***  
  
Norrington shook himself free of his memories. He saw that lights were on in some of the establishments in the middle of town, as well as in many of the residences above the shops and offices that lined the Port's main thoroughfare. He hadn't looked at the clock before he'd fled Elizabeth's, and he no longer owned a time piece, but he guessed it to be seven o'clock-- certainly no later than eight.  
  
Mud splashed onto his pants as he hopped into a puddle. He set the end of his crutch down ahead of him and swung his body forward and out of the water. Onward. Although he had no idea where he was headed at the moment, he had some idea that he would end up back at Elizabeth's at the end of it.  
  
Wasn't it better that she knew? Simpler?  
  
Wasn't it better to not have to live a lie?  
  
Voices piqued his interest as he neared the next cross street. He craned his neck as he approached and nearly ended up sitting in the mud as another man came reeling haphazardly around the corner.  
  
"What's the commotion?" Norrington asked, trying to right himself and help the other man to rights, too.  
  
A stale cloud of alcohol billowed in Norrington's face as the man teetered forward to giggle. He clapped a hand on Norrington's shoulder. "Turner's back, 'course, mate." He weaved.  
  
"Turner? Turner who?" His heart and hopes rose even as his brain tried to take authority and explain that "Turner" was a far from uncommon name.  
  
"Will Turner. Where've ya been? Will Turner and his crew."  
  
Norrington's blood stopped. "Will? Where? Where is he?"  
  
"The doc's, I 'magine. Why? Who's lookin' for 'im?"  
  
"Good God." Norrington swung back on his crutch. The man's hand slipped from his shoulder. His heart beat in his chest like a caged animal. It couldn't be. Could it? His crutch splashed down in a fresh puddle as the drunken man called after him. Ignoring him, Norrington hiked himself forward and onward. The doctor's. Will!  
  
Men and noise spilled out of two separate pubs on the cross street. Celebrations, it seemed. Will's crew? He wanted to ask after Will but stuck instead to the middle of the road and hurried past both pubs; he'd find out soon enough, and be at Will's side when he did.  
  
No crowd was gathered at the doctor's. Maybe it wasn't serious, then, if no one was worried. He grabbed the railing to hoist himself up the flight of steps.  
  
Lights shone behind the curtains, but the door was barred. Norrington pounded on the wood with the meat of his hand, then stepped back to watch the window for silhouettes and shadows.  
  
In a moment, he heard the lock pulling back. The door crept open a foot.  
  
"Yes?" A gray-haired woman in a dark dress peered through the space. He recognized her as the housekeeper who had let him in when he'd come for his physical. Mrs.... Mrs.... The name escaped him.  
  
"Will Turner," he said.  
  
"You're not Will Turner."  
  
"No, I mean, is he inside?"  
  
"Who are you?"  
  
Norrington was in no shape to cover his exasperation. "Didn't you just see me the other day? I was here for an exam." He lifted his crutch as though that would jog her memory.  
  
She looked down over her nose at it.  
  
When she did nothing further, Norrington said, "Well is he here?"  
  
"Mr. Turner? Yes."  
  
"Can I see him?"  
  
"'Fraid not. Come back at a reasonable hour, why don't you?" She started to close the door.  
  
He slammed his hand against it. "Wait. I need to see him. Is he all right? At least tell me that. His wife.... Please, just tell me is he all right?"  
  
"What's going on, Mrs. Southby?" came another voice.  
  
Hair rose on the back of Norrington's neck.  
  
"I don't know." The woman moved back from the door. "Some drunk banging on the door. He's been--"  
  
"James?"  
  
Norrington's chest felt to burst as he saw Will squinting at him in the doorway. He had no words, barely had breath.  
  
"James! I'd heard you'd come back, but no one has had any idea where you've been hiding out. James. It's really you, isn't it?"  
  
Will's hair was blonde in the light from the doctor's foyer, his skin had taken on a tan, and his lips were chapped. The angles of his face had hardened in the years since Norrington had last seen him. He looked taller, or at least had more of a presence. He'd become a man. And there was blood on his shirtsleeve. Blood on his trousers.  
  
"Will," he whispered.  
  
Will's brow furrowed. "You're shaking."  
  
Norrington blinked. His eyes felt hot.  
  
"Are you all right? Come inside." He reached for Norrington's arm.  
  
Through his jacket, Norrington felt the strong fingers. Real fingers. Alive fingers. Elizabeth would be wild when she saw he'd made it back alive after all. He pulled away.  
  
"James?"  
  
"Sorry. I'm sorry." He'd been about to marry the man's wife. His face flushed.  
  
"Sorry for what? Jesus, you really are shaking. Come in here." He stepped onto the porch and put an arm around Norrington's shoulders to lead him inside. "Are you cold?"  
  
Norrington shook his head. "Elizabeth."  
  
"Shh. It's all right. Dr. O'Brien?"  
  
"Elizabeth...."  
  
The doctor came from the exam room as they crossed the foyer. He wiped his hands with a towel. "What's going on out here?"  
  
"Can you take a look at him?" Will asked.  
  
Norrington shivered. He grasped Will's coat as Will led him into a room one down from the one the doctor had just come from. "Wh-- What are you doing at the doctor's, Will? Is everything okay?"  
  
"Shh. Everything's fine. I had a man slice his foot open with a bottle, that's all. He'll be fine."  
  
"Will, where have you been?"  
  
"Me? Where have _you_ been?" He guided Norrington to a high, wooden exam table, then helped him up. Norrington shivered. Will pulled a blanket over and wrapped it around his shoulders.  
  
"Well, what's gone on?" Dr. O'Brien asked, stepping between them. "You were healthy as a horse last week, weren't you?"  
  
"I'm f-fine." Lifting his gaze back to Will, he pulled the blanket closed at his throat.  
  
The doctor peered into one of Norrington's eyes and then the other. He pressed a hand to Norrington's forehead, then one of his cheeks. "Got yourself some color there, and you're a bit warm. Have you been eating like I told you?"  
  
Norrington nodded with a shiver.  
  
"What do you think?" Will asked.  
  
O'Brien tugged on Norrington's ear so that he could squint inside. "Fever. I'll give him something for it." He straightened. "We'll hope for the best."  
  
Norrington shivered.  
  
"Where are you staying?" Will asked him.  
  
He swallowed and realized he was growing thirsty. "Elizabeth."  
  
Will stepped back, shaking his head. O'Brien approached with an amber bottle and a shot glass. The neck of the bottle clinked against the lip of the glass as he poured sluggish liquid from one to the other.  
  
"Drink this. We'll get you over to that bed and see how you fare overnight. Mr. Turner?"  
  
At the doctor's nod, Will slipped himself under Norrington's arm. After Norrington dutifully handed back the empty shot glass, Will helped him to his foot, then across the room to the narrow bunk.  
  
The thick taste of medicine lingered on his tongue. "Something to drink," he whispered as Will helped to stretch out on the bed.  
  
"All right. Do you have any more blankets, doctor?"  
  
"The cabinet over there. I'll have Mrs. Southby fix some broth, though I doubt he'll be awake long enough to drink it. The stuff I gave him works pretty quick."  
  
Norrington watched from under drooping eyelids as Will laid two woolen blankets over him, then smoothed them under his chin.  
  
"Go see your wife," he tried to tell Will. His words sounded as sluggish as the liquid he'd drank. His eyelids slipped closed; he struggled to open them back up. As soon as he succeeded, they fell again. 


	9. Chapter Nine

Title: Between Wind and Tide  
  
Author/Pseudonym: Ruby Isabella  
  
Rating: R  
  
Disclaimer: The following is fanfiction based on a property owned by Disney.  
  
Summary: Norrington returns to Port Royal after long absence  
  
Notes: Sequel to "A Windward Tide." Also, you might worry at times that this is not slash, but it is. Really. Cross my heart. Finally, it takes place some years after PotC.  
  
9.  
  
"Three day," Wira'una said as he hung a fresh water pouch from Norrington's neck, bringing his total number carried to two. Norrington glanced toward the ocean, which licked the shore thirty or so feet to his right.  
  
"Cut brush," Aritana said, thrusting a machete toward him, handle first. "Coconuts."  
  
"Keep this way." Wira'una pointed down the spit of shore with an outstretched arm. He lifted the arm, keeping it straight, then made it vertical again. Stay on this course, he was saying. Norrington shuffled his balance on the crutch, adjusting for the weight of the new water pouch.  
  
"You find town no time," Jaci said.  
  
"Three day." Wira'una lifted and lowered his arm again.  
  
Norrington nodded. He hadn't seen the ocean in a year. The wind blew it-- its smell and tiny stings of salt mist--into his face. The jungle had been dark and moist, day and night. The shore was gray and damp in the late afternoon. He lifted his face to the wind.  
  
They were six days--three, probably, if they hadn't been slowed by Norrington's stilted pace--out from the village. He wondered if the travel time that Wira'una was giving him to "town" took his infirmity into account, or was it three days as the able-bodied Indian traveled?  
  
At least they weren't going to kill him. He pulled in a deep breath before tearing his gaze once more from the ocean.  
  
Wira'una lifted his palm. The others, behind him, did the same.  
  
If he could make it the six days back to the village--on his own, after the three men left--then he could get to Jupicahy in the night, they could travel back to the ocean, and then--  
  
His shoulders sank. _Then...nothing._ Where would they go? They couldn't stay on the beach; if their own tribe didn't track them down and kill him-- or both of them--then another would. Or they'd starve to death. Die of thirst. Exposure. Animals. Nor could the two of them continue onward along the shore on the path Wira'una's arm had described. That way was meant for him alone; it led to white men. Civilization. Imprisonment or death for Jupicahy.  
  
Wira'una turned to go and Aritana followed. Jaci alone still held his palm in the air.  
  
"Goodbye," Norrington said, lifting the hand that held both the machete and his belongings. His change of clothes. Medals.  
  
The three Indians disappeared between the green leaves and slim tree trunks of the jungle with the grace and stealth of jaguars. Sure and swift of foot, they would probably make it back to the village in three days. Two.  
  
As he stared at his foot prints--easy to distinguish from the others--he dropped the machete and his blanket-wrapped bundle of belongings to the sand. The last time he'd seen the ocean, he'd stood on two feet.  
  
One-handed, he pulled the water pouches from around his neck and dropped them, too. Then, unfettered by anything but his makeshift crutch, he made his way toward one of the rocks that looked faced the ocean.  
  
He had to leave his crutch on the sand in order to clamber onto it.  
  
***  
  
The sound of the ocean riding against the shore woke his bladder. He shifted on the bed, then sat up. The covers slipped from his shoulders. He set his feet on the floor and pushed himself up.  
  
Too late he realized he didn't have two feet to put on the floor. He collapsed with a yelp.  
  
"James!"  
  
Hands slipped under his arms.  
  
"Doctor!" the same voice called.  
  
"Will," he said. He opened his eyes, saw a shirt in front of him and caught its cloth in his fist. "Will."  
  
"Shhh."  
  
"I'm sorry."  
  
Will backed him against the bed.  
  
"What's going on?" asked Dr. O'Brien, coming into the room.  
  
"It was just a dream," Norrington said as Will folded him until he sat on the edge of the bed.  
  
"I think he's all right," Will agreed, gently prying the fingers from the front of his shirt.  
  
"I don't know what I was thinking." A swatch of clarity began to cut through the fog in his mind. "Sometimes it feels like it's still there, you know?"  
  
"_Are_ you all right?" Will asked.  
  
"Lately it seems like I don't know whether I'm dreaming or not until I land flat on my face."  
  
"Shh. Why don't you lie down? It's late."  
  
He looked up at Will. _Will._ It was strange, though. It was as though he was looking at two people, one superimposed onto the other. At one angle, the man reaching for his shoulders was Will Turner, no mistake, and then half a second later, he wasn't quite. Lines crinkled at the corners of his eyes. His cheekbones sharpened as he reached to nudge Norrington's hip onto the bed.  
  
"What time is it?" Norrington asked.  
  
"Two."  
  
"In the morning?"  
  
"Yes. Lie down."  
  
He allowed Will to arrange him. "Have you been here the whole time?"  
  
"Yes. Here or the parlor." He pulled a blanket from under Norrington's leg. The man who was almost Will flickered over the image of the man who was Will; Will was lean, the man he'd become wore strong, broad shoulders. Together these Wills shook out the blanket before letting it fall over Norrington's body. "Mrs. Southby fixed me a pot of tea before turning in herself. I've been amusing myself with staring at the walls and running business calculations in my head. When I'm not worried sick about you."  
  
"What about Elizabeth?"  
  
"What about her?"  
  
"Shouldn't you go see her? You just got back." He came up onto his elbows.  
  
Will's hand felt warm against his forehead as he used it encourage Norrington to settle back down. "Shouldn't you get some sleep?"  
  
"I'm not tired." But a fuzzy warmth had begun to settle over him like the woolen blanket. He blinked as Will's hand continued to stroke his forehead. His blinks grew slower, his eyes staying closed longer than they stayed open until finally sleep came over him like a wave.  
  
~~~  
  
Hours later, he woke from restfully dreamless sleep. He sat up in bed; the urge to urinate had doubled itself since he'd first woken from his dream of the ocean. This time, however, before trying to get up from the bed, he reached for his crutch.  
  
"Where are you going?"  
  
One lamp and a thin gray light from the room's single window showed Will sprawled cross-armed and splay-legged, in a rounded-back wooden chair at the end of the bed. His eyes appeared closed, but it was certainly his voice that Norrington had heard.  
  
"Thought I'd have a pee."  
  
Will opened one eye, which he used to scrutinize him. "How are you feeling?"  
  
"Like I need to pee." He hopped across the room in search of a water closet.  
  
When he returned several moments later, he found Will on his feet, his hands clasped behind him, and looking toward the doorway with an inquisitive expression that had the appearance of being too hastily put on, as though he hadn't wanted to be caught pacing the room.  
  
"Sit down," he said, stepping back to clear a path to the bed.  
  
"I'm fine," Norrington said. Still, he set his crutch against the wall and lowered himself onto the edge of the bed, where he succumbed to Will's concern in the form of a palm against his forehead.  
  
"See? Fine."  
  
"You're warm."  
  
"No warmer than you." An old familiarity crept up on him, causing him to place his hands firmly down on either side of him in order to resist putting them on Will's hips. Their relationship had ended well before Norrington had sailed brashly out in the name of the King; he had no claim to Will's hips. No right to lay his head against Will's chest and hope that Will would rub his scalp to soothe him. "Where's O'Brien?"  
  
"Sleeping, I expect." Will stretched. His back made a soft popping noise. "The sun's barely out," he added.  
  
"It's barely been out all week."  
  
"How's it feel, being back?"  
  
"I could ask you the same."  
  
Will dragged the chair over. "I think I heard Mrs. Southby moving about. Maybe I can sweet talk her into breakfast."  
  
Norrington's stomach grumbled agreeably at the suggestion. He laid an arm across it self-consciously.  
  
"And after that...." Will said.  
  
"And after that, we'll go see Elizabeth."  
  
Will scrubbed his face with his palms. "James, I know you--"  
  
"No. I'm sorry. It's my fault. If I had known, really, I never would have-- Surely you must understand...." His chest tightened as he listened to the words coming out of his mouth; none seemed adequate. He had been about to marry the man's wife for God's sake--never mind how Will had felt about the idea the first time he'd proposed it, all those years ago. "For your career," Will had said in a flat voice. "Well, yes, isn't that what marriage was invented for?" had been Norrington's response, and it had been met not with a headshake of disgust, no, nor a passionate argument about the rights and wrongs of the world, but with a hurt in Will's eyes that Norrington had at the time mistaken for fear that Norrington would leave him once he'd taken a wife.  
  
Will peered over his hands at him.  
  
"It's not her fault, you know," Norrington pushed on. He curled his hand around the arm of Will's chair. "It's mine. The blame all falls on me. Again. As usual."  
  
"No. James--."  
  
"Will. Please. It's not her fault."  
  
The chair scraped the floor as Will stood and turned his back to Norrington.  
  
"Breakfast," Norrington said, needing to smooth the situation over. "And then we'll--no, you; I don't need to go--you'll go see Elizabeth. And everything...everything will be fine."  
  
Will nodded without looking at him.  
  
~~~  
  
"Are you sure you're up to this?" Will asked as they walked side-by-side up the road.  
  
"I've survived a bit more than a mile's walk."  
  
Will seemed to search the street ahead with his gaze.  
  
"I'm fine," Norrington said finally. "No fever. No chills. I'm fine."  
  
Will clasped his hands behind his back. "Fine."  
  
They walked on in silence. The gray sky looked as though it was considering allowing the sun to break through; at the very least, it wasn't raining. Even the puddles in the street had lessened. Soon, Elizabeth's white fence shone in the distance.  
  
Norrington bent his free arm behind his back. Hand-clasping while walking was out of the question for him, but the simulation of it was enough to settle the nerves that had begun to poke at him. They hadn't yet reached the house and already he felt like a superfluous appendage. He wished he'd gone back to the idea of having Will go see her alone.  
  
"Where are you going?" he asked, pulling himself to a halt. Will had walked past by the entrance to Elizabeth's walkway.  
  
"To see Elizabeth."  
  
"But she's--"  
  
A door opened at the house, catching both their attention. Norrington wrinkled his brow as a middle-aged man in a brown and green coat stepped onto the porch. Who was this, he wondered.  
  
The man spotted them at the end of the walkway. "Mr. Turner! You're back."  
  
"Hello, Mr. Young," Will called. "How's Mrs. Young? "  
  
"Good, good. And you must be the Commodore Norrington bloke everyone's been speaking about. Quite an adventure you had!" By this point, Mr. Young had met them at the end of the walkway. He thrust his hand forward.  
  
Reluctantly, Norrington took it.  
  
"Horace Young. A fine pleasure to meet you, Comm--"  
  
"Mister," Will said, leaning in.  
  
"Mr. Norrington. Yes."  
  
"Pleasure," Norrington said, relieved to have his hand back.  
  
"Off to town?" Will asked.  
  
"Mrs. Young, in expectation of sunshine this afternoon, has decided to clean house."  
  
"Ah. Well, on your way," Will said. He laid a hand on Norrington's back to turn him away.  
  
"Will, where _are_ you going?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Elizabeth!"  
  
"Yes, let's go see her."  
  
"No! She lives here. It's your house. Weatherby bought it as a wedding present."  
  
Will's brow creased. "Yes, this is the house. But it's not mine anymore."  
  
"Have you gone mad? Not-- Yes it _is_. I was just--"  
  
"No, I sold it."  
  
"What? What do you mean?" He jerked his head toward the parlor window; perhaps she was watching out it. If so, what was she thinking?  
  
No, if she was watching, she would have come running out.  
  
"James, after Elizabeth.... I...." His shoulders rose as he took a great breath, then sank as he pushed the air back out. "I didn't have need for a whole house, so I sold it to Mr. Young."  
  
"After Elizabeth what? What the devil are you talking about? After she what?"  
  
"After she died."  
  
"Have you gone mad? She-- She's not dead, Will. She's very not dead."  
  
"James...."  
  
"She's not."  
  
"Yes, she is. She--"  
  
"No. Listen. I just--" He motioned toward the house, looked at it. "Oh for God's sake she said _you_ were dead. What is this, one of Shakespeare's plays?"  
  
"Are you all right?"  
  
"No, I'm not. She said.... She said that when you heard about my shipwreck, you got up a crew and--"  
  
"I did! But she was....already gone by the time we got news of your wreck."  
  
"She said she sent for that scoundrel Sparrow and that even he couldn't talk you out of it. She kissed me, right here, just yesterday." His finger was cool where it poked his lip. "She is not dead."  
  
"James--" He reached for his arm.  
  
"No! I was in her house. I--I sat on her sofa, slept in the guest room. I ate meals with her, meals cooked by Estrella."  
  
Will's eyes softened. He caught Norrington's arm gently. "Estrella died of cholera."  
  
"No! I was there!"  
  
Will clutched his him as he pulled back. "I can show you. You don't have to believe me, but I can show you."  
  
"Show me what? Come inside and I'll show you." He pulled in the direction of the house. "I'll show you. Elizabeth! Estrella?"  
  
Will's grip was firm.  
  
Norrington's voice weakened. His chest heaved.  
  
Will said, gently, "Come on." 


	10. Chapter Ten

Title: Between Wind and Tide  
  
Author/Pseudonym: Ruby Isabella  
  
Rating: R  
  
Disclaimer: The following is fanfiction based on a property owned by Disney.  
  
Summary: Norrington returns to Port Royal after long absence  
  
Notes: Sequel to "A Windward Tide." Also, you might worry at times that this is not slash, but it is. Really. Cross my heart. Finally, it takes place some years after PotC.  
  
10.  
  
He found the chiseled stone at their feet difficult to argue with.  
  
"How?" he asked, thinking that it must be a mistake, that he must be having one of his dreams. Or had Elizabeth been the dream?  
  
"An accident."  
  
"What happened?"  
  
He watched Will pull his gaze from the stone to look out over Port Royal; the cemetery had, out of necessity, been built on the far side of the port from the sea and on the highest available elevation. The only things higher in sight were the heavy tops of scattered palm trees and Fort Charles.  
  
The stones on the graves--most only two or so years old, courtesy of the outbreak--were windworn at the corners already. Pocks marked where rain had pelted them. Some, though not the one with Elizabeth's name on it, had sunk or shifted in the soft ground.  
  
"She lost her father to cholera," Will said finally. "She lost a lot of people to it, in a very short period of time."  
  
"Estrella."  
  
"Right. Her friends. Shopkeepers, delivery men...in general just about everyone she'd dealt with for ten or more years. Seemed that way, at least."  
  
"And then?"  
  
"And then. And then to add to it, she was so afraid." Will turned his head back toward him. "Not afraid for herself, but for the baby. She had nightmares. She was--" He took a deep breath and looked away again. "I thought of getting something for her from Dr. March, but first I was afraid of bothering him with such a little thing in the middle of all he had to deal with. And then...well, he died." He shrugged as he continued to look out over Port Royal. A breeze stirred his hair where it had come loose from its tie.  
  
"And the baby?" Norrington asked, his mind going back to the child's room until reason stepped in to tell him that if Will and these graves existed then the child's room he swore he'd slept in didn't.  
  
Will's voice was so low that if rain had been falling it would have drowned it out. "It was never born."  
  
Norrington swallowed through a tightening throat. "I'm sorry."  
  
"Well." Will's hands brushed the sides of his trousers. "We could have tried again."  
  
"What kept you?"  
  
Will turned, his eyes like coffee about to spill over. "She slipped off a cliff in the rain."  
  
Norrington took in a breath. He didn't know how to respond. Will crouched on the damp earth in front of her headstone. He plucked a weed, then laid his arm across his knee with the thin plant and its roots dangling from his fingers. His body, bent toward the grave, mimicked the weed.  
  
"What was she doing on a cliff?"  
  
Will crumpled the plant in his hand as he stood. "Yelling for me to not leave." He watched the weed drop to the ground, then apologized curtly. Before Norrington could say anything, he turned, hands shoved into his trouser pockets, waistcoat bottom flapping against his wrists, and headed back in the direction of town.  
  
Norrington took a few steps to give chase, but the slick grass and muddy ground demanded more care from a one-legged man than two-legged one. Winded and with a throb in his armpit from twisting his crutch in an effort to keep his foot and the crutch from sliding out from under him, he stopped and watched Will stride down the hillside.  
  
He glanced back at the graves--eighty of them or more. Their stones seemed to lean silently toward him.  
  
~~~  
  
Eventually, the way that Wire'una had pointed had led to the outskirts of a small settlement where, had he approached from another direction, his experience might have been different. As it was, he came upon the settlement from the north, and from the north the first dwelling in the settlement belonged to an old man and his grown son. Neither had a wife, as far as Norrington had been able to tell. The two of them shared a one-room shack that Norrington found himself making his way past when suddenly he was set upon.  
  
The barrel of the old man's musket bruised his chest as he used it to shove Norrington against a tree.  
  
The son snatched the crutch away and tossed it aside so that he could go on to snatch Norrington's water pouches and his bundle of belongings. All of these were tossed aside.  
  
The men spoke Portuguese; Norrington did not. His gaze ran from one face to the other in an attempt to learn what they were discussing. He'd survived the Indians without at first understanding their language; to keep calm, he told himself that he could do the same with these men.  
  
The son swept a hand in his direction while he spoke to his father. Norrington touched his chest where the musket barrel had pressed.  
  
He dared not ask them if they spoke English or the language of the tribe he had come from, or even broken French. When he'd last been current on current affairs, the Portuguese and the British were not on each other's dance cards. He had no guess as to where they stood with the French. And the fact that he was dressed like an Indian from the Amazon basin hadn't so far seemed to impress them. The longer he could put off claiming a nationality, the better.  
  
The son tore open the blanket of belongings.  
  
A handful of medals from the British Royal Navy jangled to the ground.  
  
Norrington's breath stopped.  
  
The old man jammed his musket against Norrington's chest once more as the son looked up with narrowed eyes.  
  
The son stood, then, and walked up to Norrington, face to face. When he spoke, spittle splattered against Norrington's lips.  
  
"I don't understand," Norrington whispered against the son's barrage of words. Speaking earned him a backhand across the face. He blinked, one eye threatening to tear from the sting.  
  
The old man grabbed his arm, yanking it, and shouted "Vindo!" His son picked up the chant as he crouched to gather Norrington's clothes, medals, and water pouches.  
  
"Vindo!"  
  
Using the arm that wasn't being yanked, he held onto the tree behind him. His crutch lay some feet away; the old man was attempting to drag him in the opposite direction.  
  
"Wait," Norrington said. "Crutch." He nodded his chin toward the fork stick lying against a row of wide grasses.  
  
The son, red-faced and narrow-eyed and clutching all of Norrington's belongings except the crutch under one arm, strode up and slapped him again, this time with his open palm, then grabbed his hair and said, "Vindo!"  
  
Norrington, letting go of the tree, teetered, hopped twice to keep his balance, and then spilled onto his hands and knee in the dirt.  
  
The old man nudged his son and said something that made them both laugh as they stared down at him.  
  
"Deixe-o rastejar," said the old man with a wave of his arm as he turned away.  
  
The son spit more words out, including "rastejar," and kicked him.  
  
By the time the old man and his son turned him into the authorities at Recife, he had learned enough Portuguese to know when they were telling him to come and when they were telling him to crawl.  
  
~~~  
  
"James."  
  
His name pulled him from the depths of his thoughts. It took a few seconds for the past to wash away enough for him to register that Will was beside him and that he had made it to the bottom of the hill.  
  
"I apologize for taking off," Will said.  
  
"I understand."  
  
They walked together in silence.  
  
He'd sat in a jail in Recife for four months, until finally a privateer by the name of Captain Roque, a man who spoke a fair amount of broken English, had come to prod him through the bars with a stick and ask him questions, the answers to which he didn't appear to care about listening to.  
  
Norrington had watched him swagger back down the hall; the thin stick he'd used for poking scraped the stone floor as he went.  
  
After Roque turned at the end of the hall, Norrington heard laughter. Talking, too low to make out. Then more laughter. Hearty, back-slapping laughter.  
  
He let go of the bar he'd been gripping at the front of his jail cell and let his back rest against the cool wall.  
  
Footsteps. Norrington sat up straight, his heart beating his breastbone. The privateer approached again, and he had with him a soldier swinging a ring of keys.  
  
"Where were you going?" he asked Will suddenly, bringing the both of them to a halt.  
  
"When? Oh." His gaze climbed the hillside behind them. "Work."  
  
"Work?"  
  
"On a merchant vessel...."  
  
"What happened to blacksmith?"  
  
"Elizabeth and I thought there was more potential in running merchant ships. In fact, Elizabeth loved the idea and took up the books and business end almost immediately. This was before she'd become pregnant, before the cholera. We'd lie in bed and talk about owning a whole fleet of ships one day. She convinced Weatherby to finance the first one, a schooner of dubious water-worthiness, and our dream was launched." He pushed his hand through the air.  
  
"And then?"  
  
"And then she was five months pregnant. And then she lost the baby. I let jobs go to other companies so that I could be with her--we only had the one ship at that point. I tried appointing another man captain but nearly lost the one ship in that decision. But say I gave up it, sold the ship. Then what? Port Royal's not big enough for two master blacksmiths, and it wasn't long after Brown passed out under a moving donkey cart that a new man moved in, taking up the work that needed to be done around here. He did some work for me even."  
  
His pace had quickened as spoken. His hands had tightened into fists. Norrington found himself being left back.  
  
"Besides," Will said, glancing beside himself, then over his shoulder. He stopped and turned. "Besides, I didn't want to give it up. I _like_ the sea."  
  
"She didn't agree."  
  
"No. We never fought so hard, ever. Finally I just had to do it, accept a contract, get on the ship, go."  
  
Norrington caught up. Will turned and began walking again, at a slower pace.  
  
"And she stood on the cliff calling after you," Norrington said.  
  
"I didn't learn of her death until I returned."  
  
~~~  
  
Silence walked with them as they entered town. Norrington, having no idea where they were headed, merely followed, and mere following allowed his mind to engage itself in recreating the terrible last months of Will and Elizabeth's marriage. He felt a pain through and through him at the image of Elizabeth running, yelling, slipping, being silenced forever, all while Will's schooner sailed silently away.  
  
"So, how'd you get back to Port Royal?" Will asked, interrupting his thoughts.  
  
He looked up. Will had stopped them the bottom of the front steps of a narrow house.  
  
"This is mine," Will said in response to Norrington's creased brow.  
  
"Ah."  
  
"How'd you get back?" Will asked again, leading the way up the steps.  
  
*"Hey, Joao, come, you try some," Captain Roque had said, speaking to Joao, but speaking English for Norrington's benefit. His blunt fingers dug into Norrington's neck. The ship heaved, causing the brig's door to swing open with a low moan. Norrington tried to look backward, beneath Roque's arm, but he couldn't see the open door. He closed his eyes and listened to someone--Paulino, maybe--push it back closed. Unlocked, it would fall open again the next time the ship hit a swell. Eventually, they would leave and lock it behind them. "Joao, come, be a man," Roque called. Norrington lifted his eyes until he could see Joao standing ten feet beyond the bars, a cask in one hand. He lifted the cask as though to show Roque, and said, "I just came for this." "Whatever, little pig fart." Roque's fingers clamped Norrington's neck and Norrington squeezed his eyes closed as he felt Roque's manhood forcing into him once more.*  
  
"On a privateer," Norrington replied at the top of the steps. Will nodded.  
  
~~~  
  
"So, you did go after me, like she said?" Norrington asked as rum made his belly feel as though it was melting into the chair Will had pulled in front of the fire for him.  
  
Beside him, Will drained his glass, then shrugged. "I'd lost Elizabeth. I had nothing keeping me here, and had I managed to arrange some business that would take me out the way your ships wrecked."  
  
"So you did go. Jesus. Elizabeth said you had." His hands trembled. He laid the one not holding the glass of rum flat on his thigh, but still it shook. "But if Elizabeth.... If she's dead.... Jesus." He scrubbed his cheek with his shaky hand.  
  
"I wanted to bring back your body," Will said quietly. "I thought that's all I'd find, if I found anything at all."  
  
Norrington's throat tightened. _My body._  
  
"We did find bodies."  
  
Norrington's hand shook as he lifted the glass to his lips.  
  
"Seventeen of them."  
  
"Seventeen."  
  
"All buried. All marked, though not a one with a name, but we dug them up and identified most of them. The two we couldn't put a name to, I at least could tell that neither was you."  
  
"I couldn't figure out a way to mark their names permanently," Norrington said, his gaze intent on the fire, his voice sounding like someone else's, someone more calm. "Marks in the sand blew away. Pebbles scattered. I could tell you the names of those two, though, if you tell me which ones you did identify." He looked down into the empty bottom of his glass. "I know all their names."  
  
"James?"  
  
"I buried them."  
  
"Alone?"  
  
He nodded. His throat again felt like it was closing up, but then a dry sob broke through, saving him from suffocation. He covered his eyes with his hand. "They kept washing up. There were.... There were five already when I washed up myself, and I had hardly got the third in the ground when another showed up. And another and another.... Until they stopped. I waited. I walked the stretch of coastline for miles, every day, looking for more.... But that was it. The end. Seventeen. Eighteen, if you count me."  
  
"Let's not count you in with dead, all right?" Will squeezed his shoulder.  
  
Norrington resisted letting his body give in and lean toward Will's; if he were to allow it, he wouldn't be able to hold back the tears. 


	11. Chapter Eleven

Title: Between Wind and Tide  
  
Author/Pseudonym: Ruby Isabella  
  
Rating: R  
  
Disclaimer: The following is fanfiction based on a property owned by Disney.  
  
Summary: Norrington returns to Port Royal after long absence  
  
Notes: Sequel to "A Windward Tide." Also, you might worry at times that this is not slash, but it is. Really. Cross my heart. Finally, it takes place some years after PotC.  
  
11.  
  
Slowly the details filled themselves in: he was waking up, apparently on a soft bed. His leg was still missing--this he knew because his good knee was drawn up so that the heel of his remaining foot touched the stump of his other thigh. His pillow, he surmised, had become jammed between the top of his head and the headboard because his cheek and the side of his mouth were pressed against a mattress while the top of his head was nestled against something soft.  
  
His hair twisted against the pillow as he rolled toward the sound of curtains being pulled back. He opened his eyes.  
  
And pushed up on an elbow, his other hand clutching his chest. He looked around himself, then back at her. Holding a vase in front of her, in two hands, she smiled at him from behind a wash of flowers.  
  
"Elizabeth?" His voice cracked across the syllables.  
  
"Dear? What's wrong?"  
  
Norrington swallowed. His gaze darted across the room again. The guest room. "This dream I...." He looked at her. "It had to be a dream, hadn't it?"  
  
"Since you were sleeping I'd say it must have been."  
  
"I left here, didn't I? Last night?"  
  
Sunlight streamed through the window. He blinked, his eyes unaccustomed to it. Then Elizabeth's silhouette blocked a large swath of the light as she set the vase on a table in front of the window. His eyes were relieved.  
  
"About that...." Elizabeth said, adjusting the curtain.  
  
"When did I get back?"  
  
"Yes, well, about that, too."  
  
"What about which?"  
  
"About your leaving, I owe you an apology. I really have been alone too long--not just alone in the sense that I'm missing a husband, but truly alone. Save for Estrella, of course. Being alone plays tricks with your mind. You of all people...you must have experienced that while you were...well, on your own." She settled on the edge of the bed.  
  
*Joao had unlocked the door to the brig. _Joao_ Joao had filled his thoughts--his soft way of speaking, his bashful smile. All these things imagined, of course, for what else did he have to do with his days and nights in the brig than imagine? Paulino grabbed him roughly, hoisting him to his foot, but Joao slipped easily under his other arm. Norrington, hanging between the two men, let his head fall toward Joao, let his temple brush temple Joao's thick, dark hair. He closed his eyes as they led him toward the ladder; he breathed him in. "That bag of shit not off my ship yet?" Captain Roque growled as Joao dragged and Paulino shoved Norrington above deck. When he was yanked upright once more, he saw Port Royal ahead of him. Joao once again slipped an arm behind his back, this time to lead him toward the gangway, and Norrington suddenly found himself not wanting to go. "Joao," he whispered, too softly for Joao to hear.*  
  
"Elizabeth--"  
  
"I don't know what I was thinking. There were better ways, weren't there, to let you know that I knew?"  
  
He drew in a breath to respond, but she hurried on. "I should have kept it a secret. What good does it do, you knowing that I know?"  
  
"No, you shouldn't have kept it a secret." He pulled himself up so that he was sitting with his back against the pillows. In the guest room. At Elizabeth's house. He fingered the linen sheet to make sure it was real.  
  
"And as to how you got back here," she said, sliding a glance in his direction. "You were carried. You'd had a bit much to drink, I'd say." Her gaze moved back to the window. She smoothed her skirt. "Can't say I blame you."  
  
She twisted to face him then, suddenly. "What about your dream? What was it? You looked as though you'd been kicked in the chest."  
  
The dream came rushing back. Will, the doctor's office, the cemetery.  
  
"My God, it was so real," he said, wishing for all the world that he could lie his head back on the pillows, close his eyes, and retreat to that other world. "I even had a dream inside the dream," he mused as he stared at the blankets across his lap. He looked up at Elizabeth who was leaning in, watching him, waiting.  
  
"The dream inside the dream...I was leaving the Indian village."  
  
"And the dream?"  
  
He shook his head. Sunlight gained purchase on the rug; soon its beam would crawl up the side of the bed.  
  
"What time is it?" he asked.  
  
"Half past eleven."  
  
"Tuesday?"  
  
"That dream really does have you shaken up." She gave him a peck on the lips before rising. He touched his mouth with his fingertips. Dead women don't have warm lips. He looked up at her.  
  
"You must be starving--unless you're hung over. Are you?"  
  
He took in the sunlight, the flowers, the strands of Elizabeth's hair that had pulled loose from her hairdo.  
  
"You know what I said in the dream?"  
  
She picked up a shirt--his--that lay over a chair and shook it out. "Which one?"  
  
"Pardon me?"  
  
"The dream or the dream inside the dream? Which one?"  
  
"The dream."  
  
"What'd you say?"  
  
"I said, 'Lately, I don't know whether I'm dreaming or not until I land flat on my face."  
  
"What an odd thing to say."  
  
"I had just fallen."  
  
She had the shirt folded neatly over her forearm. She patted it, then said, "Dreams. They're strange things. I'll have Estrella fix you something to eat, all right? Do you want to get up or should I have her bring it here?"  
  
~~~  
  
"It's a lovely day, isn't it?" she asked, sweeping the parlor curtains open wide. Sunlight lit bits of dust in the air, turning them golden.  
  
"Yes. I was thinking of taking a walk."  
  
"A walk?"  
  
He swung the crutch forward, then his body behind it, aiming toward the window. Breakfast had shored him up; he was more than ready now to have the sun on his face. "Would you care to come?"  
  
"Where to?"  
  
"Well, I thought.... The cemetery."  
  
"Oh, I...." She looked toward the window, almost longingly. Then, turning back, she smiled widely. "Why not? It'll be good to get out, won't it? Are you sure you're up to it?"  
  
"I'll be fine."  
  
He closed his eyes and let the sun warm his eyelids through the window's glass as she hurried upstairs to ready herself.  
  
Will's palm on his forehead, warm like the sun, came to mind, causing his eyelids to flutter open. He realized his dream was in truth a nightmare-- how long would bits of it keep coming back to tease him?  
  
He turned his head at the bustle of skirts. Elizabeth had a small purse hanging by a chain from her arm, and she was tucking a few coins in it. "Are you ready?" she asked.  
  
"I am."  
  
"I thought we'd stop and buy flowers for father's grave on the way."  
  
"Sounds like a good idea."  
  
She lowered her hands and smiled sadly at him. "Father so would have loved to see you back. He thought of you as a son, I believe."  
  
"Almost had me as one," he said as he took her arm.  
  
"_Will_ have you as one before long." She patted his hand and then let him open the door for them.  
  
~~~  
  
"Where are you going?" she asked, lifting her nose from the bouquet of flowers she'd sent him into the shop to purchase.  
  
"I, uh...." He gestured down a twisting road that led to--in his dream, at least--a quiet, narrow house squashed between two imposing ones. "I don't know. I thought I'd take the scenic route?"  
  
What would it prove if he went down that road and found said narrow house? Only that he'd seen it before, perhaps years ago when he'd spent a fair amount of time in Port Royal. Surely he'd been up every street, seen every building. Dreams were nothing more than scavengers of the past.  
  
"Honestly, I haven't been out to stretch my legs in a dog's age," Elizabeth said, a slight look of pain crossing her features as she lifted a foot to massage an ankle through her boot. "I'm not sure I'd make it back home if we added an extra mile to the trip."  
  
"Right. Don't know what I was thinking anyway. I said the cemetery, that's where we'll go."  
  
He had dreamed the rows of gravestones; had dreamed, in fact, the cemetery itself since in his recollection he'd never been there. Visiting the actual cemetery would prove his dream to be just that.  
  
It wasn't as though he would have seen Will if he went to find the narrow house. His cheeks grew warm at the realization that that had been exactly what he'd been hoping to do.  
  
"Are you sure you don't want me to carry that?" he asked, nodding at the flowers.  
  
"Then how will you take my arm?"  
  
They walked on, Elizabeth under the shade of her parasol and Norrington with his fingers lightly holding her elbow.  
  
This was how it would be from now on.  
  
"What do you think I should do?" he asked.  
  
"About?"  
  
"About something to do. Work."  
  
"Why, whatever you want. Or nothing at all, though I doubt it would suit you. It's not as though we'll starve, though."  
  
They turned onto a narrower road that led away from the buildings of town, and upward.  
  
"I do have to say I'm glad you've quit the navy," she said.  
  
"Oh?"  
  
Her pace slowed and she turned her face to watch him. "Have you been thinking of going back to sea?"  
  
"I...."  
  
Her eyes looked only inquisitive, nothing more. He glanced up the hillside. From where they stood he couldn't yet see the gravestones at the top. Over his shoulder lay only the town, the majority of its buildings shoved so close together that sometimes it was difficult to tell where one ended and another began.  
  
"I haven't given thought to what I'll do."  
  
"Apart from marrying me."  
  
"Yes, apart from that."  
  
A few moments later, they crested the hill.  
  
Eighty or more gravestones, canted and worn, greeted him with silence. Even the sound of the sea and its gulls seemed to disappear.  
  
"James? Are you all right?"  
  
His eyes scanned the rows. Where had hers been? Where?  
  
"Father's over here." She picked her way through the grasses. When she reached a gravestone three rows in, she stopped and looked back. "James?"  
  
"Coming." His eyes darted from row to row as he pivoted his way over to her. Where had she been?  
  
"There's a lot of them, aren't there?" Her voice was quiet.  
  
"Yes." His voice was similarly so.  
  
"It was horrible. You can't imagine." Her gaze skimmed toward his leg. "Perhaps you can."  
  
Weatherby's stone stood at their feet.  
  
"I need to go," he whispered suddenly, a lump tightening his throat.  
  
"Of course, yes."  
  
He was already turning away, already making his way down the long row of stones. From here they didn't seem the same as the ones in his dream, not the way they had when he'd first laid eyes on them. Names swept by as he swung his body forward. Ashworth, Dickson, Pickering, Plumb, Torrens, Howard....  
  
"James!"  
  
He glanced back to see her holding her skirt off the ground as she picked her way toward him. The flowers they'd bought lay spilled in front of Weatherby's stone.  
  
"James, wait up."  
  
His heart raced. He was surrounded by the dead.  
  
~~~  
  
"Have another," she said, lifting the decanter from the tray on the side table.  
  
"No, it's all right. I'll be fine," he said, hunched in a chair in her parlor.  
  
"Have another blanket, then."  
  
He tugged the one she'd already laid around his shoulders closer. "I'm fine. I'll be fine."  
  
"You scared me." She bent to peer into his face. Her fingers pushed a stray lock of hair out of his eyes. "You're scaring me still. You're pale."  
  
Her cool hand pressed his forehead.  
  
"I shouldn't have taken you there," she said, backing away to perch on the edge of the sofa.  
  
A tremor shook his shoulders. "I took you, remember."  
  
"Well I shouldn't have let you." She rose, as though restless. "Can I get you anything?"  
  
He glanced at his empty glass. The brandy warmed his throat and belly but also exacerbated the feeling that either his body or the room was reeling. "Tea?"  
  
"And a cloth for your brow. You're perspiring despite all that shivering."  
  
He lifted his eyes to her face where he saw that she, too, wore a light glow of sweat, likely from the fire she'd had Estrella build when they'd arrived at the house.  
  
Shadows licked the firelit walls.  
  
Gripped by a sudden thirst, he leaned forward, fingers outstretched toward the decanter.  
  
The wind rattled the window panes. He looked up, worried that the force of it would break them free.  
  
The decanter slipped through his fingers, tumbled to the floor.  
  
"James!" Elizabeth called, hurrying into the room. Shoving the tea cup onto the table, she crouched by his knee. "What is it?" She turned her head to see what held his attention.  
  
"James, what is it?" Glass crunched under her as she shifted to take his hand and squeeze it. "James?"  
  
He licked his lips. Whatever had been in the window was gone.  
  
"What?" she glanced toward the window again, then turned her furrowed brow back to him.  
  
He swallowed. He reached for his crutch, just to hold it, just to have it near.  
  
"James?"  
  
"I'm sorry," he whispered. A tremor passed through him. The window showed only darkness. A moment ago...perhaps it had shown a piece of cloth, blowing by in the wind. "I'm seeing ghosts," he said, pulling his eyes from the window.  
  
The front of her dress was stained with tea, and its stays seemed about to split open against her heaving chest.  
  
He turned his gaze toward the fireplace. Windblown debris or not, in his inner eye he could still see him--Will--peering into the room, his hair whipping his cheek, his dark eyes incomprehensible.  
  
Elizabeth's hand touched his brow again. "We need to get you to bed." Broken glass crunched as she rose. 


	12. Chapter Twelve

Title: Between Wind and Tide  
  
Author/Pseudonym: Ruby Isabella  
  
Rating: R  
  
Disclaimer: The following is fanfiction based on a property owned by Disney.  
  
Summary: Norrington returns to Port Royal after long absence  
  
Notes: Sequel to "A Windward Tide." Also, you might worry at times that this is not slash, but it is. Really. Cross my heart. Finally, it takes place some years after PotC.  
  
12.  
  
In the guest room, by the light of the single lamp she'd carried with them and set on the dresser, she shifted her hip against his as she reached for the topmost button of his vest.  
  
"You're exhausted, that's all," she said. "Mentally and emotionally exhausted, and who can blame you after what you've been through?"  
  
He closed his eyes and turned his face away.  
  
Her knuckles pressed softly against his belly as she worked to free another button. The second to last one came free, then the last, then she was moving around him to pull the garment off his shoulders.  
  
"I'm sorry about your dress," he said, shifting all his weight to his foot to allow her to slip the vest free of the arm. "I'll replace it."  
  
"Don't think of it," she said. Her fingers teased his scarf from around his neck.  
  
Her fingernails skated over the skin on his neck.  
  
"Elizabeth." His voice sounded like a frog's. He pulled away from her.  
  
"I should have insisted we stay close to the house today." She watched herself fold the scarf in her hands. "But the sun...." She looked at him. "It was hard to resist, wasn't it?"  
  
A weak smile found its way to his mouth. "It was."  
  
"Well. I'll leave you to bed."  
  
~~~  
  
"Feeling better this morning?" Elizabeth asked, looking up from the foyer as he descended the stairs.  
  
"I think so, yes." He grasped the railing tightly with his free hand.  
  
"Did you sleep?"  
  
"Some." None. He'd tossed in bed, remembering Will, thinking.... Thinking, what if he'd really been there, standing in the window? What if he'd returned? He let go of the banister at the bottom; she took his arm.  
  
Up close, he saw dark smudges under her eyes, tiny lines around her mouth. "Did you sleep?"  
  
She mustered a weak smile. "Not much, I'm afraid. I've been thinking."  
  
"Oh?"  
  
"We can't get married any sooner."  
  
"No, we can't. What's--"  
  
"James?" She stopped them, just inside the kitchen doorway. "Don't let him stop us."  
  
He felt himself pull back in confusion. "What?"  
  
"I've given this quite a lot of thought, and I think.... I think you feel guilty, somehow. About us--no, I understand why you would. I do, too. It's not an easy thing, marrying again after Will. But James, I think your guilt, after all you've been through, I think it's, well, causing you...."  
  
He let his body rest against the doorframe. "You're saying I'm going crazy."  
  
"I'm not. Not at all."  
  
"I'm seeing ghosts."  
  
"Ghosts? What--"  
  
"Apparently your dead husband has decided to start haunting me. See? I _am_ going crazy."  
  
Her gaze darted. Her fingers pulled at each other. "No. No, you're...." Her chest seemed to shake as she breathed. Her hand moved there as if to steady it. She turned to him suddenly. "You've seen him?"  
  
"I.... No. No, I haven't. It's these fevers. Perhaps you're right--the stress. Some guilt."  
  
"But you think you have. You think you've seen him."  
  
"_Thought_ I had. At the time. Elizabeth, I couldn't have because he told me you were dead. But here you are. Right in front of me." He cupped her shoulder. "Right here." He tightened his grip.  
  
She lifted a strained face. "Perhaps you are being haunted."  
  
"Elizabeth, please."  
  
"Don't 'Elizabeth, please' me," she said, knocking his hand away. "You saw Barbossa's men just as well as I did. You know there are possibilities out there none of us likes to think exist, but they do. You fought those cursed pirates. You know."  
  
"Don't be foolish," he said stiffly.  
  
She lifted an angry chin at him.  
  
"Why you people insist on indulging yourself with 'cursed pirate' stories...." He sighed. "I'm not being haunted by anything but my own psychoses. You can trust me on that." He dropped his head a moment, wishing the truth were otherwise. He could settle for being haunted by Will, as long as it was truly Will. Maybe then he could ask Will his advice whenever he wasn't sure what to do, and Will would have an opinion.  
  
He'd hallucinated Will once, in the jungle.  
  
And that's all it had been. If more people left the safety of their homes and civilized towns perhaps they'd come to realize that enough real horrors existed that one didn't need to go around creating fanciful ones out of thin air.  
  
"I didn't mean this to be an argument," Elizabeth said, softening. She brushed a stray lock of hair from her cheek.  
  
"It's not."  
  
"We should eat breakfast. The tea's getting cold." Estrella had set all the accoutrements on the table while they'd been involved in their discussion.  
  
"This isn't going to change our plans," he said.  
  
She looked his way, briefly, before moving to sit at the table. He watched her shake out a crisp, white napkin to lay on her lap.  
  
When he still didn't move from the doorway, she said, "Let's not worry about it right now. Perhaps tonight, after dinner."  
  
"Perhaps tonight what?"  
  
"We can pick the thread back up again. I told you've I've been thinking." She looked up from tilting a spoonful of sugar into her tea. "I still have much to discuss."  
  
"Then--"  
  
"No. Later. In the meantime, eat. Rest. And don't worry about a thing."  
  
"Perhaps that's it," he said, spread jam on a scone.  
  
"Hmm?"  
  
"I don't _have_ anything to worry about."  
  
~~~  
  
They spent much of the morning in genial if not companionable silence with Elizabeth working at her embroidery in a chair pulled close to the parlor window while he tried to concentrate on Jonathon Edwards's _Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God_, which Elizabeth seemed to think had either been found under the eaves when she and Will first moved into the place, or it had come in one of the boxes of books she'd inherited from her father.  
  
_Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell...._  
  
As he turned the page, he massaged the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.  
  
_There are the black clouds of God's wrath now hanging directly over your heads, full of the dreadful storm, and big with thunder...._  
  
"Do you have anything lighter?" he asked, breaking the not-perfectly- companionable silence.  
  
"_The Complete English Tradesman?_"  
  
He turned Edwards's tome over onto his knee and leaned back to stretch on the sofa.  
  
"Some Swift sermons?" Elizabeth continued.  
  
Eyes closed, he sighed.  
  
"The day is slipping away from us," she said. The quality of her voice had him imagining her staring out the window as she spoke.  
  
He listened to the quiet rustle of cloth as she returned her embroidering to its basket.  
  
"James."  
  
"Mmm?"  
  
"I want you to come with me."  
  
He opened her eyes to see her standing above him, hand outstretched. He furrowed his brow but lifted his hand to hers and reached with his other hand for his crutch.  
  
"Where are we going?"  
  
"Upstairs."  
  
To the bedroom. Hers. His heart began to speed as she swept open the door.  
  
"Elizabeth?" He watched her set the lamp she'd carried onto a dresser.  
  
"Shh. Come here." She stood in the center of the room, half of her lit by the lamp, half beginning to be taken over by the shadows that had begun to gather in the darkening afternoon.  
  
Dutifully, he approached, but with protest on his lips. These she silenced by pressing a finger against them.  
  
"I won't have him ruin our plans, James. Even if he's only a figment of your imagination, I won't have him ruin it."  
  
"I won't either, Eliz--"  
  
"Shh." She raised onto her toes. Her lips touched his where her finger had been.  
  
"Are you sure?" he asked, finding that his hands were trembling but that other parts of him were unexpectedly more certain of their task.  
  
"I'm not a schoolgirl, dear. I know what I'm after."  
  
Her lips were warm against his and not as foreign as he'd worried they'd feel. She parted her lips. Her fingers pressed his back.  
  
"Why wait?" she asked against his jaw. "Why wait a week? What does it matter?"  
  
The feel of her body against his was at once strange and familiar. He slipped his arm around the curve of her back, hugging her to him as they kissed again, briefly, before she pulled away to turn around.  
  
"Help me with this?" She lifted her hair to reveal the lacing at the back of her bodice.  
  
His fingers had a time of it with the thin laces. His balance on the crutch was precarious. She reached back and squeezed his thigh.  
  
"I think that's it."  
  
She turned around, holding the front of the bodice against her with a slender arm. "Sit."  
  
He stepped back to the end of her bed where he lowered himself, leaning the crutch against a bedpost.  
  
Slowly, she began to let the bodice drop away.  
  
A flicker of movement in the shadows caught his eye.  
  
"What is it?" she asked, pressing the bodice against her again. "You saw something, didn't you?" She turned. "What? What did you see?"  
  
"Will," he whispered, watching the ghost of Will approach, watching the ghost of Will walk right through her. No. This was crazy. He had to get past this. "Elizabeth," he said, using the bedpost to pull himself up.  
  
She looked at him. He held out a hand and she came, relief relaxing the creases in her face. Will came, too. Norrington pulled Elizabeth against his side. Will's face frowned with worry.  
  
"James," Will said.  
  
Norrington held her more tightly.  
  
"James. Please. You must listen to me."  
  
He began to shake his head. He looked away to get rid of Will. "Stop it!" he yelled, and then to himself he said, "Stop it." If his brain was conjuring the image, it could also make it go away.  
  
"James, what's wrong?" Elizabeth asked, cupping his face. "What's happening? Look at me. Come back to me. Come back here. Come back here _right now_, damn you."  
  
*"Commodore?" someone had said, someone not speaking to him at all. "You're certain he said 'Commodore?' Why on earth didn't you detain the man then? I cannot believe you turned him if he said he had a commodore of the Royal Navy. I don't care if there isn't some sort of reward system set up. You'd better hope they haven't sailed on yet, man. Did you even get a name? The name of the ship? Hold on. What's this?" Norrington lifted his face from the mud by the docks and saw, for the first time, the shoes of Port Royal's governor, appointed by the king to replace Weatherby Swann.* 


	13. Chapter Thirteen

Title: Between Wind and Tide  
  
Author/Pseudonym: Ruby Isabella  
  
Rating: R  
  
Disclaimer: The following is fanfiction based on a property owned by Disney.  
  
Summary: Norrington returns to Port Royal after long absence  
  
Notes: Sequel to "A Windward Tide." Also, you might worry at times that this is not slash, but it is. Really. Cross my heart. Finally, it takes place some years after PotC.  
  
13.  
  
"Don't!" Norrington cried, pulling back at the touch of Will's fingers-- fingers that grabbed hold of his upper arm almost painfully just as he started to teeter.  
  
"Here, sit," Will said.  
  
"Where--?" He looked around as Will pulled him to a chair. The narrow house. He was back in Will's narrow house. For a moment, two worlds had flickered on top of each other, and now every trace of Elizabeth's bedroom-- including Elizabeth--had vanished.  
  
"What's going on?" he asked, fastening his gaze on Will, who carried over a bottle and two clinking glasses. "Do you know what's going on?"  
  
"Not entirely," Will said, setting them down.  
  
Norrington rubbed his arm where Will had grabbed him. "You're real. Or are you?"  
  
"I'm real." He poured a glass half full.  
  
"Where have I been?"  
  
"Right here."  
  
"Doing what?"  
  
Will lifted his head, offered one of the glasses.  
  
"Doing what, Will?"  
  
"Take the drink, James."  
  
"I don't want to go back there." He tossed the contents of the glass down his throat, coughed, then slammed the glass on the small table between them. "Do you know where I was?"  
  
Will nodded.  
  
"Do you have any idea what's going on?" He stared at Will, looking for answers.  
  
And Will started to shimmer.  
  
"No!" He lunged across the table to grab hold before he could disappear again.  
  
"I'm right here," Will said, holding Norrington's arm.  
  
"I don't want to go back."  
  
"Don't let her take you there." Will's voice sounded calm, but Norrington didn't know if he truly was or if he was merely trying to balance out his own growing hysteria.  
  
"Don't let her take me there," Norrington said, not repeating Will's advice but telling Will what he wanted from him.  
  
"I've tried."  
  
"Try harder!"  
  
"I've come up with one idea...."  
  
"Good. Good, let's hear it." His fingers dug into Will, holding on for dear life. Will felt real. Elizabeth had felt real, but he was with Will now, and Will felt real, and he wanted Will to be real, and he didn't want to let go. Ever.  
  
"Come on. Get up." Will leaned over the table to get Norrington his crutch.  
  
"Where? Where can we go? Do you think if we leave the island--?"  
  
"No. Come on." He pulled Norrington up a narrow flight of stairs, at the top of which was a single bedroom.  
  
"Will?"  
  
Will ushered him across the room. "Sit," he said, bodily helping Norrington to follow his request. The crutch clattered to the floor. "Lie down."  
  
"What? Now?" he asked, confused as Will straddled him then sat back and pulled his shirt up over his head, revealing broad shoulders and a muscled, hairless chest and stomach.  
  
Panic brushed over him; he'd been more turned on with Elizabeth. _Stop it. It's not the right time, that's all._  
  
Will clamped a corner of his shirt in his teeth. Loudly, the shirt began to tear.  
  
"What are you doing?" Norrington asked, his fingers gripping Will's knees. _Real,_ he said to himself. _Please let this be real._  
  
When Will had two uneven but long strips of cloth, he circled one of Norrington's wrists with his fingers.  
  
"Will? Will!" He struggled as Will brought his wrist toward one of the bedposts. "What are you doing?"  
  
Will's fingers wrapped and tied one strip of cloth, securing Norrington's wrist as deftly as he might secure rigging on a mizzen mast.  
  
"Will, stop this."  
  
"I'm not going to let her pull you back." He strong-armed Norrington's other wrist to the opposite bedpost.  
  
Norrington tried to convince him that the relief of Will's words was enough to overpower the distress of being tied to the bed. He fought to get his breathing under control before speaking. "So, what? I'm to stay here tied to your bed for eternity? _Ow._"  
  
"Too tight?"  
  
"Yes." Norrington jerked his wrist in its bounds.  
  
"You won't be here for eternity." Will leaned down, then, and brushed hair from Norrington's brow.  
  
"Will, please...."  
  
Will pressed his lips to Norrington's forehead.  
  
"Can I get you anything?" he asked, sitting up.  
  
"You could get me loose...."  
  
"Shh." Again he stroked Norrington's brow.  
  
"Shit." Norrington closed his eyes. He gave one more effort at pulling his arms free, but only succeeded in cramping a shoulder.  
  
"Shhh."  
  
His eyes flew open. "Elizabeth." Fading daylight pushed in through the tall windows of her guest room. He lifted his head. His hands were still bound to bed posts, but with tasseled curtain tiebacks instead of ripped shirt. Across the room, Elizabeth hummed as she worked at something on the dresser. "Elizabeth?"  
  
"Just a minute, dear."  
  
He lifted his head higher. "What's going on?"  
  
She lifted a glass and, after taking half a step back from the dresser, poured the white contents of the glass at arm's length into a larger glass container of what looked like steaming water.  
  
The water foamed and spat.  
  
"Elizabeth?"  
  
She gave him a smile. "Almost ready."  
  
An odor began to fill the room. His nostrils flared. Chemicals? "Ready for what? Elizabeth?"  
  
She continued to hum as she poured liquid from one glass to another.  
  
"Oh God answer me. Almost ready for what?"  
  
Then she was there, at the side of the bed.  
  
"Shhh."  
  
His gaze went to the drinking glass in her hand and its milky contents. Steam wafted from the top of it. "What is it?"  
  
Smiling, she set the glass down, then gathered her skirts so that she could climb onto the bed and straddle him. She drew a finger down his cheek, smiling at him. Then she reached for the glass.  
  
"What is it?" he asked again.  
  
"Lye for a liar."  
  
"What?" He yanked his wrists, but the curtain tiebacks were as effective as Will's shirt strips.  
  
"Careful. You don't want my potion to spill."  
  
_Potion._ The liquid, jostling in the glass, teetered near the lip of the glass. Norrington held his breath. Elizabeth held her hand steady; soon the contents settled. Norrington began to breathe again.  
  
"Elizabeth," he whispered. "Please."  
  
"Do you remember your promise, James? If it takes a month, a decade. You said you'd be here."  
  
"I didn't.... I didn't realize....."  
  
"Realize what, dear?"  
  
"Please. Elizabeth."  
  
"What? Realize what, James?"  
  
"Elizabeth, you're dead."  
  
"And you promised to stay with me." She slipped her hand behind his head. "It'll be over with quickly. I promise."  
  
He felt a slap against his cheek and yelled, thinking she had dumped the lye on him. His eyes closed instinctively. When they opened a fraction of a second later, the room was dark. A heavier weight than Elizabeth straddled his hips.  
  
"Tell her I'm coming," Will said.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Tell her!"  
  
Norrington struggled against his bounds. "You said you wouldn't let her pull me back." He twisted his hips, tried to kick Will off of him using his good foot. "She has me tied up, too. Jesus, she's going to kill me. Untie me, damn you!"  
  
Will grabbed Norrington's face with both hands, making Norrington look at him. "Tell her I'm coming."  
  
Norrington's heart pounded. He searched Will's eyes, looking for a way out. "I don't want to go back."  
  
"Shh," Will said, his thumbs moving in front of Norrington's eyes. He blinked against his will, and then felt Will's thumbs touch his eyelids gently.  
  
"Shh," Elizabeth said. "Don't struggle. You'll spill--_damn it!_"  
  
A warm drop of liquid splashed against his cheek. His breaths came in protracted gasps as he felt the drop begin to slide toward his jaw. The liquid trail began to itch. He gritted his teeth. His nostrils flared. The trail began to burn. He groaned against the back of his teeth. The bottom of the glass loomed large in front of his eyes. "Please," he forced out.  
  
Her finger touched his chin. "Open up."  
  
He pressed his eyes closed so that he wouldn't see the worst happening, then slowly, resolutely, began to turn his head aside.  
  
"Don't play games, James."  
  
"He's coming," he whispered, remembering.  
  
"Excuse me?"  
  
He swallowed. "....told me to tell you he's coming."  
  
Elizabeth gave a dismissive laugh. "That's hardly likely."  
  
"He said to tell you he's coming."  
  
"Impossible. He can't."  
  
For whatever it was worth, Will's words were buying him time. "He is."  
  
"But he can't. He's.... How? No! He can't-- He wouldn't!"  
  
Norrington opened his eyes hoping to see Will again but instead found himself staring at one of the tall guest room windows at Elizabeth's house. Night gained on them every moment. He was afraid to look up at Elizabeth out of fear that he might end up looking up at the glass of caustic water. His real fear was that as he watched its milky bottom, she would tip it up and dump it on him. The lye water that had bit through his cheek had left a raw, throbbing wound. His Adam's apple bucked at the thought of the stuff spilling over his eyelids, his eyes, his lips. Already, thanks to the fumes, he could imagine how it would taste passing over his tongue--sharp and clean like liquid fire.  
  
"He would," she said, sitting back. The liquid in the glass sloshed, but he didn't feel any of it spill on him. "Damn him he would."  
  
He heard a clunk--the clunk of a heavy-bottomed drinking glass being set solidly upon a wooden surface. Air rushed out of his chest.  
  
The bed shifted. He felt a tickle against his ear and yelped, then realized it was hair, not lye. Her words came hot and warm: "Do you know how he's going to get here, sweetheart?" Her fingers pushed hair from his brow. "Take a guess. Take a good guess, darling."  
  
Without the lye to worry about, his brain fitted the pieces of the puzzle easily. "No!" His chest heaved. "No." Closing his eyes, he wished himself back. "Will!"  
  
When he looked again, he was alone in Will's bedroom. Was it too late? Digging his foot against the mattress, he shoved his body as far up the bed as it would go, then he stretched his head toward one wrist. Using his teeth, he tugged at the knot that held his wrist.  
  
Just as it was about to come free, he heard a noise. _Yes!_ He lifted his head, held his breath. It wasn't too late, maybe. Another soft sound came from beyond the bedroom. Grabbing the cloth in his teeth, he pulled the knot loose.  
  
"Will? Will, are you there?"  
  
He waited; for a long stretch of seconds he heard only his heartbeat. Footsteps broke the rhythm, then the creak of a floorboard. The creak of the bedroom door.  
  
"Will. Thank God. She thinks.... Elizabeth thinks.... You're not, are you?"  
  
Will walked slowly toward the bed. Metal glinted at his side. Norrington began to shake his head. His throat wouldn't work. Wordlessly, Will straddled him, settling back on Norrington's thighs.  
  
"Will, please. Don't." The knife blade glinted as Will lifted it. "No!" He reached out with his free hand to grab at the wrist that held the knife, but Will dodged easily backward. Changing tactics, he threw himself toward his still-bound wrist. Will's weight kept his hips pinned, making it difficult to reach the knot, but his fingertips found it, found the part of it that needed to be plucked out of itself. He allowed himself a quick glance at Will while his fingers scrabbled to set himself free. "Please stop," he said, watching Will. "Please, please stop."  
  
He felt the cold of the knife blade as though it pressed against the inside of his own wrist.  
  
Free! His hand came free and he bolted upright, the strip of cloth trailing from his wrist. With one hand he caught Will's grip on the knife; with the other, he caught the wrist Will was cutting, slick and tacky with blood. "Don't," he said, toppling Will off him, rolling on top of him. "Don't you dare fucking do it."  
  
Will lay, breathing heavily, but without struggle. His eyes searched Norrington's face. "What happened to your cheek?"  
  
He'd forgotten. He ducked his head aside to rub it against his shoulder. "It's a burn. I'll live."  
  
With his hand still clamped around Will's wrist, he pulled them both up until they were sitting. "How deep is this?" He lifted Will's wrist without opening his hand.  
  
"Deep enough."  
  
"Blast you. Come on." He crawled toward the edge of the bed. His crutch lay on the floor. Unwilling to let go of Will's wrist--he was, he hoped, stemming the bleeding with his grip--he let himself drop to the floor so that he could reach his crutch. By then Will, concerned, was on his feet and helping him up.  
  
He dragged Will first to the room's windows so that he could pull back the drapes. The sky was orange. Nonetheless, the room was lighter than it had been with the drapes closed. He pulled Will toward the lamp--"Carry that."-- then toward the dresser, where he fished out the first piece of cloth his hand closed upon--it turned out to be a shirt. Finally, he pulled Will to the bed.  
  
"Sit."  
  
"You too."  
  
Norrington didn't argue. The crutch clattered once more to the floor. He held Will's wrist, still gripped in his fingers, toward the lamp. He dreaded opening his hand; what if blood gushed up from an artery?  
  
"It's okay," Will said in a quiet voice.  
  
Norrington shook his head as he caught a corner of the shirt into his hand.  
  
"If I die, we can all be together," Will said.  
  
"No."  
  
Resisting the impulse to close his eyes, Norrington pried his fingers loose of Will's wrist.  
  
There was blood, but it seeped rather than gushed. He used the cloth to wipe a mess of smeared blood away from the wound.  
  
"Well?" Will asked.  
  
"I don't think you're going to die. Hold your wrist." He closed Will's fingers around itto free his own hands so that he could rip the shirt into bandages.  
  
"Two good shirts in one night," Will said. "This is getting expensive."  
  
Norrington's jaw tightened. After he laid several strips on his thigh, he placed the back of Will's wrist on top of them. He began to wrap the wrist tightly. "That all right?" he asked quietly.  
  
Will lifted his wrist, cradled it in his other hand. "Thank you."  
  
Norrington found he couldn't look at Will. "Were you really going to kill yourself?"  
  
"I was counting on you stopping me first."  
  
"If I hadn't?"  
  
Will rubbed the bandage with his thumb.  
  
Norrington bent to retrieve his crutch. The trail of lye on his cheek still burned. His wrists burned, too, from the cloth that had bound them. He rose and made his way across the room. At the doorway, he stopped. His jaw muscles had tightened so much that it was an effort to open his mouth. When he did, his voice sounded like a ghost of itself.  
  
"Is that what you wanted?"  
  
"Never!" The wooden bed frame creaked as Will rose from it. "We wouldn't be the same people over there. You saw that yourself, with her."  
  
Norrington braced himself in the doorway with his free hand. He wasn't looking back, into the room. He was looking ahead, at the front door. "If we could have been fine. If none of us got perverted over...there...."  
  
"No. I wouldn't want that. Not even then. It's not worth it."  
  
Norrington felt Will at his shoulder.  
  
"Are you going to go back?" Will asked.  
  
"Would you follow if I did?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
Norrington turned and looked at the bed. "What'd I look like, when I was gone?"  
  
Will, too, looked toward the bed. "Like a ghost."  
  
"How did you know I wasn't one?"  
  
Will looked back at him.  
  
"How do you know I'm not dead?" Norrington asked.  
  
Will studied the bed once more, choosing his words. "Well, other people could see you, for one. And.... I guess I was just taking my chances. I just _believed_ you were alive."  
  
"I believed Elizabeth was alive. Estrella. Everyone who saw me with you, they could have been dead too. They could be yet."  
  
"I don't know what to tell you. I just believe you're alive."  
  
In a dead voice, Norrington said, "I wish I believed it." He filled his chest with air. "How come I could go over to...wherever it is she is? You couldn't, not unless you...." His throat clutched the word. He nodded instead at Will's bandaged wrist.  
  
"I think you _were_ dead, James."  
  
"What? Were?"  
  
"As far as you were concerned."  
  
Debate rose at the back of Norrington's throat, but Will was quicker.  
  
"You wanted to be a dead body washed ashore on the rocks. What right--" Will jerked his shoulder, caught his eye with a hard gaze. "What right did you have to live while the men under your command died?"  
  
"No right!" he said before he could catch himself. Will's eyes softened with concern. He rubbed the cheek that didn't burn. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean--"  
  
Will's voice had no edge to it when it cut Norrington off. "Stop being sorry."  
  
He nodded. His gaze avoided Will's, dropping to his chest, then over to his bandage. "I should have died."  
  
"What should have happened _did_ happen. You've no right to decide otherwise."  
  
"It's not fair." His voice cracked over the words.  
  
"It'll be okay." Will squeezed his arm.  
  
Norrington nodded.  
  
"Look at me."  
  
Norrington risked it, looking up without lifting his face.  
  
Will gave another gentle squeeze. He moved closer. "It'll be all right."  
  
Norrington lifted his chin. Will's eyes were right there, searching his face.  
  
He smelled like the wind that came off the sea.  
  
He swept stray hairs from Norrington's brow.  
  
He smelled like the sea.  
  
"Do you think, maybe, it would be...a mistake...." He felt hot, like he had a fever again.  
  
Will's mouth softened into a smile. "The only mistakes I know about are the ones where someone lets his fear of making one keep him from trying."  
  
He felt himself sway closer to Will at what felt like a rate of an eight of an inch a second.  
  
"It'll be okay," Will said again, just before their lips touched.  
  
~~~  
  
The deck, the masts--all of the wood on the ship--smelled like sunlight. Norrington ran his hand along a railing and felt healed by the warmth.  
  
"You're sure about this?" Will asked, stopping beside him, setting down the load of supplies he'd lugged up the gangway.  
  
Sunlight glittered off the blue-green sea. Norrington drew in a long, clean breath. Salt. He loved the smell of sea salt. Will had it on his skin, in his hair. By the end of this, their first business trip together, he hoped to be covered in it again, too.  
  
"What's there not to be sure about?" he asked, turning. "Want help?"  
  
"No, it's--"  
  
"Give it here." He held his arms out so that Will could hoist a crate onto them.  
  
"Got it?" Will asked.  
  
"Aye-aye, Captain." He hop-walked away from the railing, the muscles in his arms feeling good to get a workout. His new leg clopped against the deckboards. It wouldn't be long before that bit of wood smelled like sunlight, too.  
  
"Hey," Will called.  
  
"Yeah?" Norrington turned with his load.  
  
Will's grin was as warm as the sun.  
  
Norrington grinned back.  
  
The sea awaited them.  
  
~end~ 


End file.
